The media industry is crumbling before us
When will you start caring?
I had a comedic actors roundtable from The Hollywood Reporter playing in the background when my ears perked up at one of the questions was, “Why acting?” Ted Danson was first to speak, answering simply, “I wouldn’t know what else to do.” The rest of the actors struggled to come up with an answer that differed much from Ted’s, each iterating a similar sentiment, some joking, “it'’s the only thing I’m good at,” or “it’s all I know how to do.”
This is a feeling many creatives are familiar with. When we set out to make instead of serving or doing, sometimes the response is, “Who do you think you are?” Family members and friends will ask, “But what is your real job?”
Some of us are met with this kind of feedback early enough that it alters our life plans. For example, I wanted to be a writer, but that wasn’t a *~*stable*~* career, so instead I went into public relations. Instead of creating my own content and telling my own story, I sold my creativity and intellectual ability to instead provide value to brands and therefore pay my bills. Not necessarily because I couldn’t bear to go without writing, but because, as Ted Danson said, I wouldn’t know what else to do.
Despite choosing this “stable” career path and allowing myself to be milked dry of every drop of creative juice in me while also taking shit from entitled clients and delusional management, that very “stable” industry is now on the precipice of mass destruction.
Last week alone, Disney slashed 3% of its workforce, affecting its subsidiaries including ESPN, FiveThirtyEight, ABC News, and National Geographic Magazine. In addition, Vice Media laid off about 100 employees, while Insider and the Miami Herald significantly downsized their newsrooms. Finally, Paper Magazine, Facebook Watch and BuzzFeed News shuttered their doors permanently. This bleak week comes after nearly a year of unpropitious job cuts at some of America’s most successful outlets like NPR, the Washington Post, Sports Illustrated and Allure plus trouble in the streaming industry at Netflix, Spotify and Amazon Prime Video.
Without these platforms and publications, how will existing creatives (journalists, anchors, artists, designers, stylists, publicists, producers) continue to make a living? And how will new creatives get “discovered?” And what happens to those of us who “wouldn’t know what else to do?” a la Ted Danson. Without publications to write for or platforms to reach new audiences available, many of us right-brained individuals will be displaced from the workforce entirely, rendered useless and deemed worthless.
Big Tech is much to blame for this debacle due to its obsession with AI. The use of text generating tools like ChatGPT threatens the role of writers while AI art threatens the role of graphic artists and designers. While the argument can be made the content produced by AI technology does not deliver the same quality as a highly-skilled individual with actual thoughts and emotions, it is faster and cheaper to use. Right now, our one saving grace is the hinderance presented by copyright laws, which are not up-to-speed with recent technological advances.
Still, as a creative, as a writer, as a publicist, my heart breaks a little more each time I see news of a mass layoff in the media industry. Our field is made up of storytellers who dedicate their lives to being the voice of our neighbors, disseminating important information and recording our history. And yet, we are consistently dismissed, our impact minimized.
Maybe the general public will care when the movies they see, the events they attend, the news they read, and the content they enjoy all sharply decline in quality. Maybe they will care when misinformation is spread about their company, or they get scammed. Maybe that’s what it will take, and maybe they deserve it.