U.S. media stands up to Trump, but can’t stop industry’s financial free fall

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Newsletter: A closer look at the day’s most notable stories

Jonathon Gatehouse · CBC News · Posted: Aug 16, 2018 2:09 PM ET | Last Updated: August 17

U.S. President Donald Trump has a history of demonizing the media – while also benefitting immensely from its coverage of him. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Welcome to The National Today newsletter, which takes a closer look at some of the day’s most notable stories. Sign up here and we’ll deliver it directly to your inbox Monday to Friday.

TODAY:

• More than 350 U.S. newspapers stood up collectively today to denounce Donald Trump’s characterization of the media as the ‘enemy of the people.’ Their solidarity likely won’t help the declining financial fortunes of the industry.
• ​Italy’s populist government, the EU and private companies are all trading blame for the collapse of the Morandi Bridge, which killed more than 30 people in the city of Genoa.
• Brazil’s next federal election is in October, and the most popular candidate, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is currently in prison. Awkward!
• Missed The National last night? Watch it here

Trump vs. the media

Donald Trump isn’t big on backing down.

And so it was this morning, after more than 350 U.S. newspapers published coordinated editorials denouncing the U.S. president’s repeated assertions that the press are “enemies of the people.”

• Hundreds of U.S. newspapers run editorials rebuking Trump for attacks on media

• CBC IN PENNSYLVANIA

  Trump’s ‘disgusting media’ rhetoric finds willing ears from a charged audience

The 72-year-old made his real estate fortune on the backs of the press, feeding and sustaining his brand through his countless media appearances and even coverage of his marital infidelities.

The playbook was the same for his subsequent reality TV career, and then his climb from fringe candidate to the Oval Office, in which he benefitted, by some estimates, from $5 billion worth of “free” media exposure.

So it should come as no surprise that Trump took the editorial-page rebukes as an opportunity to advance the same headline-grabbing argument that he was being asked to abandon.

Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump

THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA IS THE OPPOSITION PARTY. It is very bad for our Great Country….BUT WE ARE WINNING!

10:50 PM – Aug 16, 2018

• 105K
• 55.1K people are talking about this

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If there is a war between the U.S. president and the American media, it’s one he’s likely to win — if only by attrition.

Newsroom employment in the United States dropped by 23 per cent between 2008 and 2017, a loss of 27,000 jobs, largely precipitated by “failing” newspapers, which shed 45 per cent of their staff over that period.

Television news employment remained flat, while digital media jobs grew, but not nearly fast enough to offset the overall decline.

If anything, the with 36 per cent of large American newspapers and 23 per cent of high-traffic digital outlets having gone through at least one more round of layoffs between the beginning of 2017 and this past April. And the larger their circulation, the more likely they were to have fired journalists.

The situation is no better in Canada.

More than 225 weeklies and in excess of 60 dailies have disappeared since 2010, including 36 small-town newspapers shuttered as part of a TorStar-PostMedia swap last fall, with another six killed in June. All the closures were accompanied by layoffs.

The Canadian Media Guild counts more than 12,000 positions lost to firings and buyouts in recent years. And even the country’s largest papers have drastically slimmed down, with the Toronto Star having shed more than 300 staff and the Globe and Mail in excess of 100 people since the beginning of this decade.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/national-today-newsletter-1.4787446