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.

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