For years, the journalism industry has been in financial decline. In March, when the coronavirus pandemic shot through the United States, business imploded. Reporters lost their jobs at an alarming rate; some outlets folded entirely. All through the spring, with a presidential election in sight, media workers—deemed “essential”—were thrown into unemployment.
ABOUT THE NUMBERS This data was collected through the Journalism Crisis Project, a partnership between CJR and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. We are continuing to update these numbers online at cjr.org.
The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.