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The news industry has been full of gloom and doom reports for the last few years (and for a few years before that, and before that), struggling to find a balance in its budget to provide quality coverage, printing costs, and keep up with a rapidly evolving Internet world, while relying on inconsistent advertisement revenue. Journalists are losing jobs, papers are closing down, but there are a few exceptions to the trend.

No Surprise here: news industry job losses are higher than the general workforce.

From Editor & Publisher:

“The news industry has been hemorrhaging jobs long before the economic crisis began last year,” Unity Executive Director Onica N. Makwakwa said. “These numbers confirm that the economic downturn has hit the news industry very, very hard.”

Read here: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004014096

Ouch.

But some better news from SF Gate on ethnic media. The Nichi Bei Times, the oldest Japanese American newspaper recently closed down, but was almost immediately reborn as the Nichi Bei Weekly, now a non-profit publication, thanks to the efforts of a concerned community loyal to the publication.

Read here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/19/BUT019LJS0.DTL

Kevin Weston, director of new media for New America Media, said long-standing African American newspapers such as the Oakland Post and San Francisco Sun-Reporter have survived numerous “waves of recessions” in part because of the passion of the staff.

“The folks that are in the field see it as a business, but to them this is also community work, this is their life’s work,” Weston said.

Another hat off to the idea of hyperlocalized news coverage. If people care enough, they read; if they read enough, they care.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee wrote today in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece about their story in North Korea:

Our motivations for covering this story were many. First and foremost, we believe that journalists have a responsibility to shine light in dark places, to give voice to those who are too often silenced and ignored. One of us, Euna, is a devout Christian whose faith infused her interest in the story. The other, Laura, has reported on the exploitation of women around the world for years. We wanted to raise awareness about the harsh reality facing these North Korean defectors who, because of their illegal status in China, live in terror of being sent back to their homeland.

I have been following the arrest, detainment, trial, sentencing, and finally, the release of the two journalists very carefully over the last few months, as well as the experience of another journalist, Roxana Saberi.

In a general sense, I feel a connection to these women, as a journalist, as an Asian American, as a person. On a personal level, I suppose I identify a bit with the women as well. Lee is a Christian, and like myself, Ling is from Sacramento and she graduated from UCLA.  I find her work inspirational, thought-provoking, and impressively revelatory. Their shared desire to give a voice, to empower, to inform–it’s the universal desire of journalists. Journalists are public servants, charged with a mission to bring the truth, the stories that matter, to people who listen, who can help. So in spite of the crappy pay, the terrible hours with nagging deadlines, a lifestyle often leading to consumption (of unhealthy amounts of alcohol), the constant threat of the death of an industry, journalists are still at it. And for Ling and Lee, in spite of their harrowing experience in North Korea, their priority is still to tell these untold stories.

Laura and Euna, thank you for sharing your stories, as painful as it was for both of you. I am deeply grateful that the two of you are back home, safe, and with your families.