The writing was on the wall when the Everett Herald owner, Canadian-owned Black Press Media, filed for bankruptcy in January. We only found out through mysterious posts on all Sound Publishing websites.
Mississippi-based Carpenter Media Group, in coordination with Canso Investment Counsel & Deans Knight Capital Management, assumed control of the Everett Herald and Sound Publishing.
Odd notice that showed up on all Sound Publishing sites on 1/15/24.
Earlier this month, Carpenter also acquired two dozen Oregon publications.
On Tuesday, Carpenter informed the union that it will lay off 62 people, which amounts to over half the unionized newsroom employees at The Everett Herald.
The Everett Herald had already been shrinking before this layoff. Despite population growth, the daily circulation is one-third what it used to be.
Staff retention issues and low pay led to the editorial staff creating a union in 2022. Later that year, The Everett Herald announced it would start using the U.S. Postal Service for delivery. The paper also ceased publishing Sunday & Monday editions. Readers often complain about reading old news by the time it gets to them.
US Daily Newspaper Circulation (source: PEW Research)
The Everett Herald isn’t alone in the struggle. The entire newspaper industry has been struggling.
Between 2004 and 2023, 2,627 weekly publications closed or merged with other papers. In 2023, nearly 20,000 jobs were cut.
Online, Facebook has been deprioritizing news since 2020. Other social media channels has increased news coverage, but Google has long been the biggest player in driving traffic to news sites.
RISJ’S Digital News findings
Google has long been prioritizing national news sites over local, but when California had a proposal to force Google to pay publishers for news content, Google removed some California news sites to gauge “the impact of legislation on our product experience.”
Now with AI repurposing web content without compensating the original authors, the entire news industry is in panic mode.
June 19, 2024
Everett Economy, Beyond Everett