The Original Sin of Digital Media: Layoffs and Bankruptcy Threaten News Sites.

Last month was one of the most crushing and ominous periods for digital journalism in living memory, with many industrywide innovations meeting tragic fates. The Big Tech bubble has burst, and digital media got splattered with shrapnel. The industry lost 5,000 jobs from 2014 through 2017, and more than 15,000 cuts were announced in 2018 alone. The current media-layoff spree has not concluded, and it's always a matter of timing. The proposed fix of trusting that virality alone could drive readers to important subjects was far from a cure.