Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., a global outplacement and business coaching firm headquartered in Chicago, released a January 2024 report comparing recent lay-offs of US-based companies. Of the industries reviewed, the news industry was one of the segments that has taken the hardest hit. Estimates show that between January and November of 2023, 2,681 journalism jobs were lost. The report states: “News, which includes digital, broadcast, and print, and is tracked as a subset of Media, announced 528 layoffs in January [2024], up 1,660% from the 30 tracked in December [2023]. It is the highest monthly total since March of 2023, when 532 cuts were recorded.”

Similarly a CNN article, posted on January 25, 2024, claims: “The news industry is enduring a brutal start to the new year, with outlets large and small across the country hemorrhaging reporting staff as legacy business models that kept much of the industry afloat for decades collapse in plain sight.” The CNN article, written by Oliver Darcy and Jon Passantino, continues: “At the national level, CNN, The Washington Post, NPR, Vice Media, Sports Illustrated, Vox Media, NBC News, CNBC, and other organizations have cut swaths of their reporting staff. At the local level, layoffs have been nearly constant, with newspaper giant Gannett cutting hundreds of employees, and small outlets carving out already lean operations.”

The wheels are literally coming off all over the country. The Los Angeles Times is losing approximately $40 million a year and recently reduced its staff by almost 20%. TIME cut close to a dozen staffers. BuzzFeed laid off 15% of its staff and closed BuzzFeed News entirely. Vice Media filed for bankruptcy and Sports Illustrated shut down. Hundreds of staffers at Conde Nast, Forbes, and The New York Daily News are preparing for layoffs and staging walkouts to protest the cuts. CNN’s ratings at the end of 2023 were the worst they’d been since 2014.

The Washington Post, which has focused some of its hate on conservative Christians in Ottawa County, is circling the drain. In 2023 The Washington Post had plans to cut 240 employees and finished the year losing nearly $100 million. Media companies like The Washington Post are claiming that these layoffs will be devastating in that people will likely begin to read more misinformation on social media.

Gannett—publisher of USA Today as well as hundreds of local media outlets across the country and the United Kingdom—is struggling, eliminating 400 jobs and six percent of its reporters and other staffers in 2022. As of December 2023 eight high-ranking editors and executives had left their positions at Gannett, raising concerns about the company’s future. Gannett owns one of Ottawa County’s local media outlets that has had its own struggles the past couple of years. The Holland Sentinel sold its building in 2021 and moved staff to work remotely due to downsizing.

In 2020 MLive, which owns eight Michigan newspapers including The Grand Rapids Press, closed its Grand Rapids printing plant and laid off 71 employees. Subscribers to The Press are well aware that the thickness of their newspaper is not what it used to be.

But why is this collapse picking up speed? And in the middle of an election season? Media outlets expected a “Trump Bump,” which is an increase in audience because of an election season involving Trump. The bump hasn’t happened and doesn’t look like it’s going to. Many outlets are claiming the shift in advertising and audiences to digital news to be the biggest problem facing news outlets. However, journalism’s biggest problem may not be what you think.

A study out of Syracuse University gathered data from 1,600 journalists across the country. The data shows that only 3.4 percent of American journalists say they are Republican, while 36.4 percent say they are Democrats. While this isn’t a shock to most people, it does seem to tell the story as to why in Ottawa County national and local media aren’t readily consumed. Ottawa County has been one of the most conservative counties in Michigan for years. The last time a Democratic presidential candidate carried the county was in 1864.

The Syracuse Study also shows that only 7.4 percent of journalists find it important to try “reaching the widest possible audience.” The wide range perspective is completely gone, and media credibility is on its last legs having lost the political balance of the audience surrounding it.

The Ottawa County audience simply can’t trust local or national media that are biased and ideologically unbalanced. Local media, like the Holland Sentinel, Fox 17, MLive, and The Grand Haven Tribune, have all but stopped attempting to reach the majority of Ottawa County. Instead, local media focuses on niche audiences that agree with their journalists’ personal bias. This type of reporting increases the divide in the county, which perhaps is the goal of liberal journalists in a conservative red county. Sarah Leach, editor of the Holland Sentinel, and Matt Witkos, reporter for Fox 17, will drop their own biased articles into social media echo chambers such as Ottawa Objects. Ottawa Objects is a Facebook group opposed to the majority of the conservatives on the Board of Commissioners. The Objects speak against those who believe in election integrity, and they vehemently oppose citizens who voted for President Donald Trump.

Another interesting fact from the Syracuse Study is that for 70% of journalists it is no longer the norm to get their facts or content from the source. Instead, content typically is sourced from social media. Ottawa County residents can see this in many of the Holland Sentinel articles where Editor Sarah Leach uses her own Twitter posts as facts. The days of being in the room, speaking to an actual source are becoming a rarity.

If national and local media continue on this downward trend—of not understanding the political make up of Ottawa County—readership will continue to dwindle as the majority of citizens reject the bias bashing and complete warping of truth that these outlets produce. The idea that most residents in Ottawa County read The Washington Post or any local media is far from the truth.

Reagan, the author of “We Are Simply American,” wasn’t wrong. The world can now see the collapse in real time.