The Latest: How COVID-19 is impacting media, from increases in traffic to layoffs (Mar. 31, 2020)
By: Saanya Jain
Tags: Journalism, Covid 19, Media, Podcast, The Latest

The Latest: How COVID-19 is impacting media, from increases in traffic to layoffs (Mar. 31, 2020)

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THE NEWS

88% of publishers expect to miss their 2020 forecasts this year “because of canceled events, declining ad sales and difficult-to-monetize COVID-19 coverage,” according to a Digiday survey.

Rather than share one particular challenge or success from the past week in this space, we’re going broad and trying our best to summarize the many ways in which the pandemic has impacted the media industry in recent days. Let us know what else you would find useful as the pandemic’s ramifications continue to manifest.

Traffic, engagement, and viewership are up.

Web traffic: Parse.ly found that pageviews increased by 61% in the last two weeks compared to the past seven weeks for sites in its network. As of last week, pageviews increased by an average of 122% at metro newspapers. According to Bloomberg’s CEO, coronavirus coverage is responsible for 30% of its traffic.

Interactions with news stories on social media “increased 56% over the last two weeks, compared to the rest of the year” for 10 major publishers tracked by Newswhip.

News app downloads are up — for news aggregators and digital, radio, and TV news outlets alike, according to Apptopia.

News podcast downloads are generally up — Vox Media’s podcasts and Slate’s podcasts are both being downloaded about 50% more than usual. Daily news podcasts in particular are doing well — Vox’s Today, Explained has seen the biggest increase of all its podcasts. Overall podcast downloads are down about 10% while total unique listeners are down about 20% since the beginning of March, disproportionately impacting true crime podcasts, according to Podtrac.

TV ratings: Both broadcast newscasts and cable news networks have experienced viewership surges, the latter of more than 50%.

Subscriptions are up.

Subscriptions to both U.S. and European publishers rose last week compared to the same time last year, by 63% and 267% respectively, according to Piano. Publishers who have taken down meters for coronavirus coverage have also seen subscriber growth, like The Atlantic and Bloomberg, which had their “single best week[s] of subscriber growth.”

Local news outlets — like The Seattle Times, The Tampa Bay Times, and The Denver Post — also saw between a 2–4x bump in subscriptions. Many of these new subscribers are subscribing before hitting the paywall, and at least one publication has seen churn decrease significantly.

Ad revenues are down.

Digital ad revenue is expected to decline 10% in Q1 at The New York Times compared to 2019. The company expects overall ad declines to be in “the mid-teens.”

Ad-blacklisting for COVID-19 keywords has led to more than two million blocked ads for The New York Times, CNN, USA Today, and The Washington Post.

Events businesses are responding by pivoting to virtual events (like Politico, Axios, Slate, and Bloomberg) and moving out of the live events business entirely, as in the case of O’Reilly Media.

Furloughs, layoffs, and closures are becoming widespread.

Closures/Suspensions: Diocese of Pittsburgh, a 166-year old weekly in Pittsburgh, permanently closed, as did The Waterbury Record, a newspaper in Vermont. Publications like The Stranger in Seattle and The Sacramento News & Review have suspended print publishing.

Print reductions: The Tampa Bay Tribune has reduced print publication days to only Sunday and Wednesday; three newspapers in Vermont have also reduced print frequency.

Layoffs: Nieman Lab counted around 100 local newsroom layoffs as of mid-March, in newsrooms like The Tampa Bay Times and VTDigger. Maven has laid off 31 people, which amounts of roughly 9% of total staff. According to a Digiday survey, 38% of publishers said that they expect layoffs at their publication.

Furloughs: Gannett announced that many staffers would be furloughed through June. iHeartMedia also announced that an unspecified number of employees would be furloughed for 90 days. Lee Enterprises announced employees not subject to pay reductions would be furloughed for the equivalent of two weeks’ pay.

Pay reductions: Publishers including Gannett, Maven Media, Disney, BuzzFeed, Vice Media, Group Nine, Lee Enterprises, and iHeartMedia announced cuts to salaries and benefits.

Executive pay cuts: Vice, Disney, Group Nine, BuzzFeed, Maven, and Lee Enterprises announced that executives would be taking pay cuts or foregoing salaries.

Conversely, BBC News has paused plans to cut 450 jobs, as it had announced in January, given the heightened demands of covering the pandemic.

Governments are taking measures to support the industry.

In the United States, Congress passed a $2.2. trillion CARES Act, enabling outlets with under 1,000 staff to apply to a $300 billion fund.

In Canada, the government is planning to buy $30 million worth of ads to support struggling media businesses.

LOOK FOR

Given the decline in programmatic revenue, how long will publishers who have taken down paywalls around coronavirus coverage keep them down? For example, McClatchy’s per-view rate of revenue “dropped by more than 15% in a single week,” leading it to re-paywall some coverage “as it aims to balance its duty [to] keep people informed with its need to bolster subscriptions.”

How sustainable are the traffic increases? Exhausted audiences might begin avoiding the news — according to Reuters, news avoidance affected a third of people even before the deluge of pandemic coverage.

What other action, if any, will governments take to support news organizations? Some, like Craig Aaron in CJR, have proposed journalism-specific stimulus packages, including direct support for daily and weekly newsrooms and increased funds for public media. Steven Waldman, co-founder of Report for America, and Charles Sennott, CEO of The GroundTruth Project, proposed a public-health ad spending measure like Canada’s of $500 million in The Atlantic.