03.10.10
Journalists will have to reinvent their future
The End of Newspapers
By MARIE BÉNILDE
Paris.
Journalists are now in the same situation as steel workers in the1970s: they are destined to disappear, but they don’t know it. That was the assessment of a banker from BNP-Paribas at the French national press federation’s conference in Strasbourg in 2006. His words caused a sensation, but the statistics support him: having lost more than 2,300 jobs last year, the French press is going through a similar crisis to the United States, where more than 24,500 jobs were axed in 2009. Only 300,000 now work in newspapers in the US, compared to 415,000 a decade ago (according to Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, quoted by Market Watch. The Washington Post has closed its regional bureaus, and the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune have filed for bankruptcy protection. Every national daily in France, apart from the sports daily, L’Equipe, has lost money.