To the Barricades?
Newspaper Cutbacks A Dubious Political Cause
By Jonathan Weber, 12-07-05
You would think that MoveOn.org, the liberal advocacy group, would have plenty to worry (and mobilize) about these days, given the Republican dominance of the political system. But somehow the group has decided that the issue we should be morally outraged about today, the one that should prompt us to write letters and hold rallies and otherwise made our voices heard is ... layoffs at newspapers owned by the Tribune company. Newspapers, you see, are in trouble, because people don't read them so much anymore and prefer getting their news - or perhaps more importantly, their classified ads - from other sources. With circulation plunging and ad revenues flat or falling, newspapers are doing what most businesses would do in that situation: cutting costs. Yet cutting journalism jobs, according to MoveOn, is unacceptable because it will undermine the "watchdog" function of the press. That argument is offbase for a number of reasons, and it's also rather offensive to the many journalists who don't happen to work at big, fat, six-figure-salary and benefit-paying corporations that long ago lost touch with their readership.I wish no ill to the many fine journalists at Tribune and Knight Ridder and the other companies in the firing line. I used to work for the Los Angeles Times myself, though before it was owned by Tribune, and it as a great place to be and afforded me many opportunities. I think strong, well-funded journalism is a good thing, both for journalists and for society. But to a journalism entrepreneur it's pretty hard to swallow the idea that it's grave threat to the world as we know it when a newspaper like the LA Times, with an editorial staff of nearly a thousand people, decides it has to do with a few less.
Layoffs are no fun: I had to lay off more than a 100 people in my previous job as editor in chief of the Industry Standard. But you know what was even less fun then the layoffs? Bankruptcy. The truth is, in retrospect, my mistake was not laying people off fast enough. Most newspapers are businesses and it's silly to make a political cause out of what in this case is a highly routine business decision.
Further, the MoveOn folks seem to competely miss the most important things that are happening in journalism today. If they are interested in supporting the watchdog function of journalism, they should find ways to support the many, many new types of journalism that are now emerging thanks to the Internet. Newspapers are sick, yes, but I believe that journalism is now entering a golden age, one where many new outlets bloom and many new modes of reporting on the world flourish. Modestly, I think New West is one of them. This new world may not offer the tenured positions that journalists at big newspapers have enjoyed for many years, and that's too bad for them, but on the broader level, so what?
The other big media initiative I recall recently from MoveOn had to do with public broadcasting, and the horror of the Republicans politicizing an operation which, by the very fact that it's government funded, is inherently politicized. Yawn.
Since MoveOn seems to have plenty of resources and they are so worried about journalism, my suggestion would be that they get out there and do some of their own. We stand ready to publish any substantive, relevant stories they come up with - there are lots of them out there. But defending a failed status quo, one in which a privileged class of mostly white, highly-educated, upper-middle-class people are presumed to have the right to do their jobs in perpetuity, at salaries far above the median, without any regard for what their bosses or their readers might think about it, well, it's enough to put a liberal interest group to shame.
[End of article]
Jonathan: I don't think anyone thinks that the Tribune Co. is near bankruptcy. They just want 25 percent return like McPaper, oops, Gannett. And thanks for continuing the grand tradition that journalists should be underpaid crusaders who live for the craft but don't make a great living at it.
Comment By Tom Grubisich, 12-07-05Jonathan Weber is right. The big dailies have big editorial staffs, yet they can't seem to spare reporters to cover important, revealing stories in their back yards, where their circulation potential exists. With its budget cutbacks, the LA Times will have to make do with a staff of 39 in Washington, D.C. Thirty-nine! The late, lamented New York Herald Tribune was able to cover Washington with a staff a quarter that size, and still make enough impact with its coverage to get banned from the White House by President John Kennedy. Like Weber, I too had to make deep cuts in editorial staff -- when I was editor of the weekly Connection Newspapers in Northern Virginia in the recession-hit early 1990s -- and like him too I waited too long. With all the resources now available, most of them at their fingertips on their computer keyboards, reporters can be much more efficent, and do even deeper stories. In a couple hours' time, a resourceful reporter can contact a brace of potential sources (utilizing e-mail as well as the phone) and data-mine all kinds of potentially relevant information, and still have time to make some more calls. In such improved circumstances of news gathering, why is it horrendous for an editorial staff to shrink by, say, 4 percent?
Tom Grubisich
screenwriter
Santa Monica, CA
I remember talking to newspapers in the mid to late 1990s, telling them they REALLY needed a web site. Most ignored my advice and instead treated the web as a threat, refusing to put their content online. Now that they have been left in the dust and their readership is dwindling they are circling the wagons and preparing for battle. Instead they should be embracing the community-oriented Internet and realize that if they don't they will be gradually replaced by it.
Cameron Barrett
Blog Pioneer & Founder, BlogCorp, Inc.
http://www.blogcorp.com
As the former city editor of Newsday's New York City edition (I left the paper in 2001) and as a journalism professor, I can tell you that without a doubt, Tribune Co.'s recent cutback of that edition has severely damaged its watchdog function and, in fact, its ability to anything more than several of the day's major breaking news stories. Further, it is also true that Newsday was also making a handsome margin of profit, despite serious circulation problems. Newsday has a tradition of independent-minded coverage. Readers who are trying to preserve the Newsday tradition of strong local coverage are doing a public service. -- Paul Moses
Comment By Jonathan Weber, 12-09-05Thanks everyone for the comments. I don't think journalists should be underpaid crusaders. But I don't see why large, chronicly mis-managed organizations should be viewed as the repository of journalism's watchdog function. Paul, with all due respect, what percentage of the Newsday edit staff is engaged in investigative reporting or "independent-minded" coverage of the news? I'd bet a lot less than are engaged in entertainment and lifestyle and sports coverage. And Tom is dead-on re the excesses of things like inside-the-beltway political coverage that's aimed not at readers but at peers.
Newsday pissed away north of $100 million dollars on NY Newsday, on the theory that either the Daily News or the Post would go away. In retrospect, not smart (instead they should have listened to Cameron). We can't - and shouldn't - count on these companies as the sole pillars of quality journalism. They are just businesses struggling, and mostly failing, to adapt, not much different on that level from GM and Ford. As a journalist friend pointed out to me in email, why isn't MoveOn petitioning for the Delphi workers who are going to lose their pension plans?
Journalism is being re-invented. Some good journalism will come from non-profits. Some will come from private companies with clever and/or public-spirited owners. Some will come from public companies, old and new, that figure out new models. As Tom points out, it's possible to do a lot more with a lot less these days. Insisting that large, publicly traded corporations have a moral obligation to support what journalists think they should support is not going to get us very far.
I don't mean to sound dismissive of the concerns, I just think there are better ways. Thanks again for the discussion.
Jonathan: To respond to your question: Newsday at one point had 60 reporters assigned to local news on Long Island and 60 assigned to local news in New York City, not including editors and columnists or separate teams for investigative reporting, enterprise reporting and local business reporting, foreign bureaus and a once-large Washington bureau. The two local desks were by far the largest desks at the paper and dwarfed the sports and entertainment desks. So a very large percentage of Newsday's staff was engaged in serious news coverage. You should realize what's at stake when a newspaper cuts back.
Second, according to Newsday's publisher at the time, NY Newsday was breaking even when Times-Mirror pulled the plug on it in 1995 to get a temporary jolt in the stock market. Where there were once 60 Newsday reporters and 10 columnists writing about local news in New York City, there are now about a dozen reporters and two columnists. That makes a difference. For example,where Newsday once covered Queens -- a county of more than 2 million people -- quite closely, it now has no reporters based there. Maybe a Web site will someday take the place of having eight reporters assigned full-time to cover just the local news in that one borough, as NY Newsday did. Right now, there is a void.
-- Paul Moses
Hey how are you doing <a >:)</a>
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