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C&RL News February 2022 92

Gary Pattillo is reference librarian at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, e-mail:  
pattillo@email.unc.edu

Google year in search
“After performing her poem ‘The Hill We Climb’ during the U.S. presidential 
inauguration, Amanda Gorman was the top searched poet worldwide in 2021. 
The country searching for her poem the most? Norway. Vaccination volunteer 
was the top trending volunteer opportunity the world searched for. [In] July, 
worldwide search interest for spelling bee winner reached a five-year high.”
Google, “Year in Search 2021,” https://about.google/stories/year-in-search (retrieved Janu-
ary 6, 2022).

News engagement
Social media interactions with news articles were down 65 percent in 2021 
compared to 2020. Cable news primetime viewership was down 36 percent. 
News media app downloads were down 33 percent. Unique visits to the top 
five news sites were down 8 percent.
Sara Fischer and Neal Rothschild, “News Engagement Fell off a Cliff in 2021,” Axios, Janu-
ary 4, 2022, https://www.axios.com/media-ratings-traffic-2021-a6be4d72-ba5f-4f8a-ae3e 
-0872ecd87677.html (retrieved January 6, 2022).

Newsroom closures
“More than 100 local newsrooms closed during the coronavirus pandemic 
(so far). At first, the pandemic cost newsrooms jobs and communities critical 
work. Now it’s starting to end entire newsrooms.”
Kristen Hare, “More than 100 Local Newsrooms Closed during the Coronavirus Pandemic,” 
Poynter (blog), December 2, 2021, https://www.poynter.org/locally/2021/the-coronavirus 
-has-closed-more-than-100-local-newsrooms-acrossamerica-and-counting (retrieved 
January 6, 2022).

Vinyl record sales
“For each of the past 15 years, sales of new vinyl have gradually increased. 
In the first half of 2021 alone, 17 million albums were sold—an 86 percent 
jump from 2020. In an extremely rare twist, an old technology came back 
to surpass a newer one. Last year, for the first time since 1986, vinyl records 
outranked CDs in annual sales. This year, they’re on pace to more than double 
CD revenue.”
Zachary Crockett, “The Insane Resurgence of Vinyl Records,” The Hustle, December 4, 2021, 
https://thehustle.co/the-insane-resurgence-of-vinyl-records (retrieved January 6, 2022).