I remember seeing the notification on my phone and just staring at it, collecting my thoughts for a minute.

This isn’t supposed to happen there. Maybe other places, but not there, I thought, still staring at the headline.

On Jan. 23 the Los Angeles Times announced they were laying off 20% of their newsroom staff. That’s 115 writers, editors, photographers and other positions. 

As a student journalist this news hit hard. Layoffs and closures are becoming all too common at news organizations around the country. It scares me as someone looking to enter the job field, and it should scare anyone who values democracy in America.

First, a little bit about me. I am double majoring in journalism and political science at UW-Eau Claire. I started writing for The Spectator in my first year here and have worked in writer and editor positions for the last five semesters. I also work as a news reporter at a local news outlet in Eau Claire.

There are a couple of things journalism students are always told they should do to set themselves up to succeed in the field after graduating. The main things: start writing articles, get experience reporting in the real world and build a portfolio of stories and examples of your work.

I’ve done all of that. I went outside of my classes to get experience, to get articles published and to work on stories with a real impact in the community.

Another thing journalism students are told is to learn how to use different forms of media to meet the changing way we consume news. That’s why I added a multimedia communications minor to my degree and am learning to incorporate more video and images in my work.

We’re told if we do these things to prepare our skills, we can be successful. That’s why the L.A. Times layoffs are such a hard hit — because each of those 115 journalists losing their jobs did the same thing. 

The L.A. Times is a major publication. While still a tragedy and a major problem, we’ve almost become accustomed to seeing small-town regional newspapers shut down as they struggled to adapt to a digital-focused business plan. We don’t expect to see major outlets like the L.A. Times take the same kind of measures.

Those 115 journalists are some of the most accomplished in the field. They are experienced, they are skilled in writing, storytelling and multimedia production. They did everything right to become good at what they do and got a job with a major outlet.

None of it mattered.

Their jobs are still lost to the state of the industry.

The journalism industry is bleeding — with national and local news outlets across the country laying off writers en masse and shuttering their doors for good. I’m scared as a student journalist.

But the effects of journalism’s disappearance are far more terrifying than the job market. 

With each journalist who’s laid off, each news outlet that shuts down, our democracy is losing its defenders. 

The free press is built around the need to keep government leaders accountable to the people. Fewer and fewer people are monitoring the inner workings of our government and informing the public.

With less news outlets watching, every democratic citizen should be scared of what their government will get away with unnoticed.

As the journalism industry fades, our democracy fades with it. The state of journalism scares me, and it should scare you too.

Mohr can be reached at [email protected].