New Delhi: Only 11 out of the 29 popular science magazines in the United States remain today, prompting mass layoffs of science and environment reporters across newspapers and magazines. In 1986 too, a similar panic had taken over the American science journalism community.
An article by NeimanLab titled “Is science journalism dying? Comparing a “science crash” 40 years ago to today” found that eight of these closures have happened since 2000. The authors added that between 2000 and 2025 US newspaper jobs fell by nearly 80 per cent.
NiemanLab’s Bruce Lewenstein and Chris Mooney, both experienced science journalists, compared the “science crash” of the 1980s to today’s crisis. They established the historical parallel but said that the two moments have a different flavour.
“The message is unavoidable: In science media, many efforts fail. They always have. For instance, McGraw-Hill launched an ill-fated mass media science magazine, Science Illustrated, back in 1946 — and saw it fold by 1949. There are many other such stories across the decades,” read the NielmanLab article.
Lewenstein said that in 1986 the “science crash” stemmed partially from moral panic. At the time, two popular science magazines had shut in the same year. However, science journalism survived through new programs to train journalists, new magazines, and even new formats of storytelling that emerged with the internet.
The duo says that this time too the panic could be moral, but the demise of science magazines is not enough.
However, the loss of Popular Science magazine, the struggling National Geographic, the laid off reporters from The Washington Post, and the cutbacks at Scientific American and other popular publications hint at something deeper. In India, Science Today and Science Reporter are also no longer printing.
“It’s not just science journalism that’s in trouble. The entire structure of journalism is changing. The struggle of print publications goes far beyond the science realm and fundamentally reflects the rise of the internet,” read the article.
Even amid economic and political challenges, the authors argue that information and commentary about science is “more widely available than ever” — through digital publications, social media, and YouTube.
However, the authors highlight a difference between science communication and science journalism. Journalism is tied to fact-checking, investigations, editorial and legal scrutiny, while science related content is not bound by those constraints.
“Some of the current concern may be overblown moral panic. But some of it is entirely justified. Still, we retain hope that science journalism will survive this economic, political, and technological shakeout. To do so, it will need to be as innovative as the researchers it covers,” the article added.