When two popular science magazines — out of about 17 in circulation — ceased publication in the same year, one commentator said, “The science magazines didn’t shake out. They fell apart.” The general manager of one of the failed magazines said, “There was a perception that they were irrelevant.” One of the publishers remembered being in a “state of shock” as the failures emerged.
The year? 1986. What just a few years earlier had been called a “science boom” in the media industry was now dubbed a “science crash.” Cries of despair came from the science and science journalism communities, worried that interest in science “was a fad.”
The same worries have now reappeared 40 years later, as publishers have cut the science and environmental reporting staff at many newspapers and magazines. Perhaps the biggest shock came in late June 2026, when Scientific American was sold to new owners, who immediately laid off 15 staff members and cut salaries of many others. But it followed layoffs of science and environment writers at The Washington Post (where one of us, Chris Mooney, worked for nearly 10 years), The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, and CBS News.
One longtime science writer recently worried he was writing a eulogy for science journalism. Another said, “We’re in a greatly diminished journalistic enterprise in this country.” On Bluesky, one commenter said, “The media mass extinction rolls ever onward.”
So, as scholars of science journalism, we wondered: Is this just a cyclical repetition of worries that appear anytime there’s a setback in this field? Or is something new and more troubling happening?
The answer is a mix of both.
The moral panic
Scientists have complained about media coverage of science for more than a century, calling it both inadequate and, frequently, inaccurate. Despite many years of increased coverage and better-trained science journalists, scientific organizations routinely call for more and better science journalism.
Less clear is whether nonscientist adults actually want more and will pay to consume science content to a greater extent than they already do — at least when not delivered by celebrities like astronomer Carl Sagan in the 1980s or, in the current era, the former NASA engineer turned award-winning YouTuber and Netflix star Mark Rober.
In 1987, one of us, Bruce Lewenstein, analyzed the crash of the science boom. Bruce concluded then that an audience clearly did exist at the time for science journalism, though it might not have been as large as some commentators — and publishers — had hoped.
The commentary about a crash, in Bruce’s analysis, represented a moral panic — a real concern, but one where interested parties often exaggerate how serious or widespread a problem is. In reality, science journalism continued to thrive in the decades after the 1980s science boom, as new programs developed to train science journalists, new outlets appeared, and new formats arrived as the internet grew.
What the data shows
Perhaps the current concerns are again a moral panic: real, but not quite what people are claiming. As it happens, the other of us, Chris Mooney, has been collecting data to update the earlier analysis.
It appears today’s doomsayers have some points in their favor: Out of 29 prominent popular science magazines created in the United States since the 19th century, only 11 remain. And eight of the closures have happened since 2000.
Unfurl the caveats: This preliminary effort only tracks print magazine closures. And it only includes magazines covering broad scientific areas — not just one field, such as astronomy — and targeted at a general, popular audience. For instance, it largely excludes educational, alumni or membership publications. But we feel the main titles are here.
And 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.
By far the starkest recent print loss is Popular Science, a title that traces its origins back to the Popular Science Monthly of 1872. As recently as 2011, Popular Science had a total distribution of well over 1 million magazines each month. But it cut back to bimonthly, then to quarterly, and then no print at all by 2021. By the end of 2023, there was no digital magazine. It continues to publish online science content and two podcasts.
National Geographic, another of the magazine giants, has also struggled. In 2023, it laid off multiple staff writers, according to reporting by The Washington Post, and ceased monthly newsstand sales. The magazine continues to publish in print.
That three of the oldest and best-known publications — Scientific American, Popular Science, and National Geographic — have all faced cutbacks in recent years surely points to something deeper afoot.
It’s not just journalism about science
Surveying the field of popular science publishing, two items of context seem relevant. First, 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.
The changes have arguably been even harder on print newspapers than print magazines. For instance, from 2000 to 2025, data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows a loss of roughly 80% of U.S. newspaper jobs, versus about 65% of jobs in the publishing of periodicals. Just as we finished this article, the hedge fund-owned McClatchey chain of newspapers announced major cuts to its newsrooms — apparently between 30% and 50% of the editorial staff at some publications, at some even more. Both newspapers and magazines have suffered from dramatic shifts in the market for advertising, which has moved online, and from how younger generations consume information.
Some of journalism’s challenges today are economic, some are political. And those are interrelated — the current fervor for profits encourages corporate consolidation and works against smaller outlets willing to forgo money in favor of meeting other goals. Those goals can include recruiting young people into science, or presenting the value of expert knowledge, or expressing awe at the natural world.
And second, in some ways, information and commentary about science is more widely available than ever. Web-only publications, social media feeds, YouTube — all offer those interested in science a much wider array of information than used to be available. It was over a decade ago now that the internet surpassed television as the primary source of science information for the public, according to survey data compiled by the National Science Foundation. The most promising new online venue for science journalism and communication today may be Substack, where individual journalists or personalities can garner their own dedicated, paying audiences.
So science communication is thriving, but that’s different than science journalism. What growth there is tends to favor quick takes and attitude, rather than institutionalized journalism with its commitment to verifying information as well as its costly trappings, including reporters who can spend months on a single project, a gaggle of editors, and, yes, lawyers.
Much online science information remains unfiltered — pushed by corporations, institutions, and some influencers for promotional purposes. Such communicators rarely dig deep for the errors, extended stories or conflicts of interest that are the lifeblood of journalism.
Concerns about failures of science journalism really amount to concerns about the collapse of institutional journalism more broadly. The social role of journalism — in a classic phrase, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable — remains vital. But as journalist and media critic Tom Rosenstiel writes in his new book, The Next Journalism, new intellectual models need to emerge.
So, to answer our own question: Yes, 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.
Bruce Lewenstein is a professor of science communication at Cornell University. Chris Mooney is a professor of practice and Julia G. and Alfred G. Hill Chair of Excellence in Science, Technology, and Medical Writing at the University of Tennessee. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
