Richard Karpel, then executive director of the American Society of News Editors, gave the AEJMC conference an assessment of where the US newspaper industry stood in the summer of 2010.
The numbers he presented were these: around 14,000 daily newspapers; 5,200 jobs lost in 2009, close to 11% of full-time positions, against 5,900 lost in 2008; and roughly 41,000 jobs left in the business. Karpel expected the rate of decline to slow, and attributed that less to recovery than to cost-cutting — papers that had been in the red were profitable again largely because they had stripped out expense.
The structural trends he identified were a rapid move to online and mobile distribution, and the consequences that followed for hiring. Newsrooms wanted journalists with multimedia and social-media skills. A 24-hour cycle meant reporters had to file faster while holding accuracy at an acceptable level. And there was a growing expectation that journalists understand the commercial side of the operation and behave more entrepreneurially.