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Friend,
Here are some numbers that should terrify every American:
- 90%: the percentage of U.S. media owned by five corporate media conglomerates.
- 50%: the percentage of newsroom staff at U.S. newspapers that have been laid off over the last decade.
- 27%: the percentage of large newspapers that saw layoffs in 2018—and that was an improvement over the 31% that saw layoffs the year before.
If you listen to the CEOs in charge of America's newspapers and other media outlets, they have no choice but to gut their newsrooms because of competition from the Internet.
But the truth is that journalism in America is being destroyed by corporate greed.
Massive mergers and corporate media consolidation is leading directly to the downsizing of the entire journalism industry, and as the quality of journalism gets worse, circulation declines and even more layoffs inevitably follow.
At Common Dreams, we have not seen these kinds of massive layoffs, because we are not part of that 90% of the media outlets owned by those five giant media conglomerates. We're nonprofit, independent, and funded by donations from folks like you.
But let's be clear: If we don't hit our fundraising goals, then the next headline you read about layoffs in the news industry could be about us.
Will you donate to help reach our Winter Campaign goal of $70,000 by March 1?
What will happen when there are no journalists left to watchdog city halls, state governments, and Washington, D.C.? Corporations—the same corporations that are running the journalism into the ground with consolidation and downsizing—will have truly unlimited power to raid the public treasury, pollute the environment, and rip off consumers.
Donate to help support Common Dreams and our nonprofit, independent journalism for 2020 and years to come.
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