Pandemic and a dying journalistic business model: how a virus accelerated a process of financial deterioration that began in 2008

Abstract

In a matter of a few days, since the first case of Covid-19 was detected in Costa Rica in March 2020, the pandemic hit the finances of the Costa Rican media with the force of a mallet and accelerated a process of financial deterioration that  journalistic companies  around the world -like La Nación- began to experiment since 2008.This work analyzes the changes that the national circulation media experienced in their work dynamics in the six months that followed March 6, 2020, when the Government announced the first contagion in the country. To measure the impact not only from the labor point of view, but also from the economic perspective, it was necessary to interview journalists from these media and undertake a review of the advertising sales reports presented to the College of Journalists. The virus surprised the Costa Rican media without having resolved the dilemma of how to reinvent itself to survive and stay in force. The pandemic accelerated, as never before, the process of erosion of the advertising model as the financial base of journalistic companies. The era of big media has come to an end