Essential stories from Fast Company for the week of February 5-9

Welcome to Fast Company Digest. Essential stories from tech, design, impact and work life. Narrated by Noah App I'm Fast Company Deputy editor and host of the new Way We Work podcast, Kathleen Davis. Here are this week's stories. First, in news that hits close to home, writer Ryan McCarthy tries to make sense of all the recent media layoffs. His bleak conclusion? After speaking to economists, experts and journalists themselves, the industry might be suffering from a complete market breakdown. Here's what that means.

Narrated by Noah Listen to more of the world's best journalism on the NOAA app or@newsoveraudio.com. For Noah this is Michael Saitow reading from Fast company, where on 2 February 2024, Ryan McCarthy writes why does journalism seem like it's collapsing? Call it a market failure. In 2024, something unusually dark is happening in an industry that is, by design, quite used to handling bad news. In a strong economy. With unemployment near a 50 year low, virtually every single part of the news business digital media, local news, tv, print, podcasts and documentaries is laying off people. At the same time, audiences for news are shrinking. Thousands of journalists are losing jobs. In conversations I've had recently with both execs and workaday journalists like myself, people have started privately whispering two extremely grim words to describe what's happening. Market failure. This term normally reserved for economists and policy types, describes what happens when a free market gets so distorted that that the normal rules of economics no longer apply to the point where that market begins to exact a toll on society. Now, in the wake of this terrible year, the journalism world is starting to wonder if its market isn't just struggling, but has outright failed. And if indeed it has. No amount of hustle, innovation or ingenuity would solve the crisis. Consider the evidence. At least 115 journalists were laid off in January by the Los Angeles times, which cut 20% of its newsroom and is losing upwards of $30 million to $40 million per year, despite being owned by billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon Chong. The Washington Post, which is owned by mega billionaire Jeff Bezos, was on pace to lose $100 million in 2023. It offered buyouts to 240 journalists. The messenger, which launched only a year ago, hired about 300 people and raised $50 million, but it will now shut down entirely. Sports Illustrated magazine's layoffs could extend to its entire staff. Vox Media underwent two rounds of layoffs in 2023. Vice Media filed for bankruptcy. Job cuts have plagued TV non profits, even a beloved music site. By way of disclosure, I've worked at the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vox and Vice. Maybe not surprisingly, I hope they all succeed. So why is all of this happening at once? Ezra Klein of the New York Times posits that journalism's middle is collapsing, leaving us only with large news orgs like the Times on one end and entrepreneurial substackers on the other. Semaphore Editor in Chief Ben Smith and CNN's Oliver Darcy both point to an array of factors, including declining print and digital business and antsy billionaire owners. None of these are sufficient to explain the sheer size of 2024's cuts. Nor can they explain why money, even large amounts of it, seem to be of no help at the Los Angeles Times soon. Chong has put nearly $1 billion into the paper since buying it in 2018, according to the company. For journalists at these struggling outlets, there's another explanation. The private market has failed, says Matt Pearce, a reporter at the Los Angeles Times and the president of Media Guild of the West. Part of what's so scary is that I don't think you can narrow it down to any one thing. It's a multitude of things that are kind of failing simultaneously or falling precipitously. Social media traffic to news sites has been dropping for years as platforms become actively resistant to news. Google has since become the largest driver of traffic for many big and small digital publishers. But since roughly 2022, thanks to changes in the platform's algorithm, execs at some sites I spoke to say they've seen big drops in Google traffic, as much as a 40% drop almost overnight. Imagine running a business in which one of your main modes of distribution can fall that quickly. Google, Meta, and Amazon absolutely dominate the US Online ad market, and experts and insiders say there's no way out of journalism's crisis without addressing their power. For Victor Picard, a professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania, there needs to be some sort of government action to push these companies to raise the visibility of journalism. Peirce agrees, noting, right now there are perverse incentives for the platforms to elevate low quality information and deplatform high quality information. There's a political economy problem in the digital advertising and social media space that has to be addressed in the antitrust arena. This kind of multifaceted market failure sounds complicated, but it's a simple concept. In a failed market, the free market produces too much or too little of a particular good, and the consequences of that mismatch hurt society. The incentives in a failed market tend to make the world worse Think of a market that makes it profitable to pollute, for example, or a digital platform that incentivizes clickbait. There's no rational business strategy or innovation that can fix a market failure. In fact, free market approaches can often distort things further, making bigger or less scrupulous players even more powerful. Failed markets can be tricky to spot, in part because some elements of the market can seem to be working just fine. For one, the New York Times has become a full on media success story, and industry focused publications are still doing well. Promising startups like platformer Defector and 404Media have made seemingly sustainable businesses during all this chaos. But these are exceptions. The larger picture is clear. Since 2005, the US has lost almost one third of its newspapers and roughly two thirds of its newspaper journalists. According to one measure, getting into this industry or staying in it now amounts to an exercise in beating the odds. Getting the news you want or need is perhaps even tougher, given that more than half of US counties have little or no access to local news. Which is why it's time to start thinking about the journalism industry as an example of classic market failure. This isn't just semantics. Conceptualizing the journalism market as fundamentally broken changes how we'll need to fix it. The truth is that markets fail all the time, and the government inevitably steps in. The private market simply would not make enough high quality roads, bridges, or schools without government action to support them. If we start thinking of journalism as we think of public education, then it really changes the calculus, says Picard, the author of Democracy Without Confronting the Misinformation Society. But blaming the tech platforms won't solve all of journalism's problems. There's a lazy narrative that the Internet broke journalism, picard says. But in my view, these are symptomatic of the deeper structural problems. For Picard, the past 100 years of the media industry have been a kind of historical anomaly. The regional advertising monopolies that newspapers and TV stations enjoyed essentially supported journalism that largely served the public good. Once those monopolies broke down in the digital era, Picard says, the marriage of convenience between advertisers and publishers splintered. Picard suggests something a little radical, viewing journalism as a pure public good and funding it with a combination of tax credits and state and federal funds. He adds that the US is an outlier among wealthier countries in how little it allocates to subsidizing journalism in other countries, including Canada, Australia, the UK and some Nordic countries subsidize journalism in creative ways, and Picard calls for practically utopian thinking about locally owned media companies. In the last few years, the LA Times, Pierce and his union have gone from bargaining with struggling newspapers to pushing public policy solutions. His guild supports the California Journalism Preservation act, which would require tech platforms to pay news organizations to host links on their platforms. A similar federal bill has been stalled in Congress. The country has a long history intervening to regulate media markets, pierce says in comments after his newsroom's layoffs in January. Soon Chong said that he has urged Congress for years to act to support local journalism. The Washington Post declined to comment, including on whether it supports state or federal action. Without a new way of looking at journalism and the value it provides, Picard argues it's a fantasy to expect anything different from the next few decades of a news industry that's primarily profit driven. These are not just his views. No one I've spoken to in and around the news business is particularly optimistic right now. These problems are unfortunately going to get worse in the short term, picard says. There is no new business model to be discovered, in my view, for most kinds of journalism. You are listening to Fast company, where Ryan McCarthy writes, why does journalism seem like it's collapsing? Call it market failure. This article was published on 2 February 2024 and was read by Michael Saitow.

For NOAA and next the unique challenges faced by caregivers and working mothers are more apparent than ever. And employees need more flexibility and compassion at work. Here's four ways managers can help.

For noaa. This is Adrienne Walker reading from Fast company. We're on 3 February 2024. Jennifer Cohen writes four ways leaders can better support stressed out caregivers and working parents American mothers are facing an existential crisis. There have never been more of us, yet it doesn't feel like it's any easier. There are also nearly 44 million caregivers in this country, a disproportionate number of them women 75%, the tune of their free labor $470 billion each year, a sobering figure only expected to grow as our boomer parents continue aging. The unique challenges faced by caregivers and working mothers in the typically fast paced corporate environment are more apparent than ever. Even the most forward thinking human resources department, armed with an arsenal of benefits and perks, isn't cutting it. Employees are yearning for more more flexibility, more compassion and more care from their direct managers. As if this didn't feel bleak enough, we're also battling a mental health crisis, particularly for those caring for small children, aging loved ones and anyone other than themselves. For almost 70% of people, their manager has more impact on their mental health than their therapist or physician and the same impact as their partner, a study by the Workforce Institute found. And those same workers want more help. The challenge for leaders is finding ways to meet the critical need for a supportive corporate culture that values and respects caregivers. I am encouraged by the onslaught of female led visionary organizations working towards a solution. Lumo Leadership offers coaching services to companies looking to do better by their working parents. Milkmaid is working to remove the stigma and burden of breastfeeding in the workplace. Three in four moms say that their company could be doing more to support working parents. So what's a leader to do when it comes to leading teams? Consider the perspective of your employee. Are they juggling multiple priorities outside of their role within your organization? Consider they may have worked on a costume until the wee hours of the morning so that their child could participate in a parade today. Perhaps they're dashing out of work right at 5 o' clock to go care for an elderly parent. Perhaps they're taking PTO to sit in the waiting room while their loved one receives chemo treatment. The complexities of balancing professional responsibilities in addition to those outside of the office are becoming insurmountable and it's on us as leaders to support our people as best we can. Foundational to any successful team, leaders must curate teams they trust, plain and simple. In turn, demonstrating authenticity and vulnerability as a leader is paramount for setting the tone in a supportive work environment. With over half of us workers juggling caregiving responsibilities outside of work, we'd be remiss not to underscore the importance of flexibility. Leaders should, to the best of their abilities, create safe spaces for team members to bring their whole selves to work, acknowledging the unique challenges faced by caregivers and parents alike. Simply put, it's a strategy that measures the success of processes and projects versus the micromanagement philosophies that result in disgruntled team members, poor culture and regrettable turnover. We as leaders are responsible for setting clear and actionable expectations where team members have a strong comprehension of their key performance indicators and and feel set up for success. Those who lead with empathy and kindness teach others what treatment will and will not be tolerated within an organization. Not only does this approach enhance the overall employee experience, but fosters commitment cross functionally and establishes a positive workplace culture that can dramatically improve the mental health and well being of caregivers and working parents. Don't let another function's fire drill. Become your team's emergency. Don't place unrealistic expectations or deadlines unless necessary. Extend compassion and recognize the outsized impact you have on the lives of those you lead. And when you get it wrong, learn to repair. The reality is, we're not always going to get it right. We're leaders, yes, but we're human too. And what do I do when I inevitably yell at my 4 year old for hitting his sister and stealing her beloved Barbie? I get good at repair. I admit my wrongdoing and apologize. And I mean it. In today's complicated landscape, we must, as leaders, take our position and the subsequent responsibility seriously. We need to recognize that once we embrace a flexible mindset and build trust with our team members, lead with empathy and vulnerability, and shift our focus towards outcomes delivered, we can continue to create a culture that not only support the diverse needs of our workforce, but also propel them toward sustained success. As working conditions within corporate institutions evolve, the path forward is clear. A more compassionate and understanding approach to leadership benefits everyone. The instability as it relates to family policy in America is far from settled. Despite recent headways pertaining to paid leave reform and conversations around the impending child care cliff, it's also far from easy to drive company wide reform. As an executive, I know that better than most. However, as a mother to two small children and an only child to two aging parents, I know it's needed more than ever together as leaders and humans. Let's not let the undeniable rally cry we're witnessing in the form of burnout and resignations be ignored. You are listening to Fast Company where Jennifer Cohen writes 4 Ways Leaders can better support stressed out caregivers and working parents. This article was published on 3rd February 2024 and was read by Adrian Walker. 4 Noah the article you just listened.

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