The news industry sees layoffs as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic.

The Hill/Vice.

Vice News becomes the latest news group to layoff employees. The Hill. 55 employees were laid off in the United States and 100 were laid off globally. Vice's union complained about the layoffs saying that it shouldn't have been done during the pandemic. Several other major news groups have laid off employees as well including Buzzfeed and GQ. The layoffs are due in part to advertisers pulling up to 50% of their ads due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

My Comment:

There is no doubt in my mind that the Coronavirus has hurt pretty much every outlet that needs ads to survive. Indeed, if I needed them to keep this blog open I'd be in trouble, but thankfully I do not. Internet advertisement as a model has been in trouble for awhile now. 

The are other factors for that besides the virus pandemic though. For one, many people have adblockers installed that prevent ads from being shown, which cuts the number of people that ever even see ads. Advertisers also don't like having their products associated with controversial and unpopular content, which is what these news networks specialized in. Vice especially is focused on "out there" news and often posts stories for shock value, it's no wonder advertisers don't want to run ads there. 

But the pandemic is the straw that's breaking the camels back. So many companies are trimming their advertising budget as there is little point in advertising when your store is closed. Sure, some are able to sell products online but if you are in an industry that is closed, like travel for example, you aren't going to be spending money on advertisement. As businesses open up they might start buying ads again but it's too late for these news outlets. 

However, I do think one of the major problems is that the media is over-saturated right now, especially with lefty sites like Vice, Buzzfeed and GQ. There are so many of these outlets and so little intellectual diversity in them it's little surprise that they are cannibalizing each other's audiences. These outlets are indistinguishable from each other as they all write about the same topics in the same style with the same goal. 

Which is too bad because Vice wasn't always like this. Back in the day they were doing real journalism about weird topics. They weren't just a cookie cutter outlet and you could see some real interesting stuff there. Not so much anymore. 

I personally am not sad to see these outlets firing people. There needs to be change in the news industry and the sooner that happens the better. We don't need 10 billion liberal outlets spouting off the same crap and the five or six right wing ones having next to no influence. It would be so much better if we had better choices in news even if that means we have fewer choices.