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Friend,
We're going to be blunt: the journalism industry is in crisis.
2,100 U.S. newspapers have shut down in the last 15 years. The newspapers still publishing have seen their newsrooms gutted by layoffs.
The total number of working newspaper journalists was cut in half from 2008–2018, and this year has seen more bloodbath layoffs.
But it's not just revenue and staffing in revenue—it's the public trust in newspapers.
According to Gallup, just 45% of Americans trust newspapers and other news media even “a fair amount of the time.”
For a long time, it was mostly conservatives who thought the media was biased or untrustworthy. But Democrats also lost faith in the news media after being let down with major stories like the Iraq War, the 2008 bank bailout, and the 2016 presidential election.
This decline in trust in the news media led directly to the election of Donald Trump and the “post-truth” era of American politics that we live in today.
When Common Dreams was founded in 1997, we saw a lot of this coming. Declining ad revenues and print circulation were already well underway, and it was clear that a new model was needed: a reliance on small donors, not corporate advertising and investors seeking to maximize return.
Today, we're stronger than ever—while newspapers continue to shrink and die. The reason is you—our readers—who make the donations that allow us to continue to grow and thrive.
The deadline for our Fall Campaign goal of $50,000 is just days away. Will you donate to help keep Common Dreams alive?
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