These are not sanguine times for American newspapers. “Reductions in force” (RIF) sweep through our cubicles like the Black Death. And, while this plague affects both national and provincial papers, it seems most dire at regional dailies such as my own, threatening publications’ curtailment or extinction. I recently succumbed to the reaper’s scythe at the Orlando Sentinel. The paper is part of the Tribune Company, owners of the Chicago Tribune (which last month shed 80 newsroom jobs), Los Angeles Times (150 newsroom jobs) and Baltimore Sun (55 newsroom jobs), among others.
In the run-up to the latest round of cuts, the subject naturally consumed every discussion among my colleagues; there were hushed conversations in the corridors and rumour-laden emails flying between staffers. The gloom was both palpable and inescapable. First came the redundancy offers. Journalists frantically calculated how long their severance packages would last before deciding whether to accept the company’s offer (I declined). To complicate matters, top editors were deliberately vague about how many layoffs would follow the voluntary departures and what the criteria for them would be.
Employees had two scenarios — why they would and wouldn’t get RIFed. I weighed it up: on the one hand, I was a target as I was at the upper end of the salary range; on the other, my beat — religion — was important to my Southern readers. Plus, I have a national profile, have won prizes and written three books.
Backup “Plan Bs” abounded. Everything from writing books and seeking university posts to more dire prospects such as becoming a colourfully vested Wal-Mart greeter.
At increasingly grim staff meetings in the newsroom, details emerged. We turned editors’ percentage targets into hard numbers and, inevitably, began looking around the room. Finally, in order to provide a fig leaf of dignity, both the “voluntaries” and the “involuntaries” were called in one at a time to receive the news. There were some surprises, some tears, and no official list was posted.
Because I was headed for a vacation outside the country, I came in the week before to see my boss and got the bad news face-to-face: I was out. Kicking me from the newspaper nest might turn out to be a good thing, I rationalised. I had my own Plan B firmly in place: to finally finish a book I have been working on for 13 years. But regardless of how well-prepared you think you are, the prospect of the job chop is one thing; the reality quite another.
How — and why — have American newspapers come to such a death spiral? Nationally, every quarterly report shows significant drops in newspaper advertising sales and circulation — with no bottom in sight. Ink-on-newsprint is imploding at an accelerating rate; the only thing rising is our readers’ average age.
Despite a monopoly market, papers in the normally prosperous American Sunbelt have gone from double-digit annual returns to the precipice of profitability. Notwithstanding the Florida real estate market’s dramatic downturn, the state’s newspapers are still making money. In the case of Tribune dailies, it’s just not enough to service the crushing debt load resulting from the highly leveraged buyout that took the company private.
The response has been to talk about transformation but then to default to traditional austerity measures, cutting thousands of newsroom jobs across the country. Regional papers have jettisoned national and international coverage, except where strong local interest exists. We shrink paper size; experiment with “alternative story forms”; create frenetic redesigns.
Our stories got shorter, simpler and more intensely local — always with a sharp eye toward how they would be illustrated, sometimes with heartbreaking results. Major stories can turn into “charticles”.
This is not why most of us got into this business. Does all this sound desperate? It gets worse.
In part, the fault is in the stars — which is to say, in the changes in culture which have produced such a media-saturated environment. But the fault is also in the newspapers being produced. Grown complacent — fat, dumb and happy — the industry became boring and irrelevant.
The great minds that lead us missed two significant internet threats. Craigslist and eBay have gobbled up our classified advertising goldmine; and newspaper strategists chose a business model based on giving away our information rather than finding a way to extract some revenue for it. Both developments have been financially disastrous.
There’s also a problem we cannot control. Journalism’s statesmen and academics may differ, but many reporters have concluded that the fault is neither in our stars, nor in ourselves — but in our audience.
Middle-aged readers say other media now trump newspapers. But more and more, reporters mutter, Americans — especially younger people — choose apathy and superficiality, the luxury of living in a normally prosperous superpower. If they want any information, they can get it from blogs — the hobbyist, derivative haven for karaoke journalists.
Do I sound bitter, or just resigned? Maybe my future communications mission should be to help turn apathy into engagement — again.
Daunting perhaps, even quixotic, but definitely needed. —