More bad news about newspapers

The expected nature of yesterday's news out of McClatchy Newspapers made it no less morbid. Struggling to maintain debt payments in a plummeting economy, McClatchy had announced it would cut more jobs from its newspapers and make other cuts to keep the Sacramento-based company in the good graces of its lenders.

Around here, that means more cutbacks at the Raleigh News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer. The N&O became a McClatchy property several years ago when the Daniels family, which had owned the paper since the 19th century, sold out to the California chain, which had a positive reputation in the industry. But when McClatchy bought the much larger Knight-Ridder chain, which had been seeking a buyer for some time, it saddled itself with $4 billion in debt. Some of the largest papers in the Knight-Ridder purchase were in cities such as Miami, Philadelphia and Akron where falling home prices and other economic ills preceded and exceeded the global recession. The papers in the Carolinas — Raleigh, Charlotte, Columbia, Myrtle Beach — were relatively secure. But McClatchy's debt load has forced cost cutting at all of its papers, and the cuts have been deep enough for readers to notice.

Having spent 33 years in the newspaper business, I know some of the journalists whose jobs are in jeopardy in this latest round (no names have been released yet). I'm concerned about all of them. They will lose their jobs through no fault of their own but as a result of changing habits among news consumers and some bad decisions by management. The N&O's downturn in ad revenue could probably be absorbed relatively painlessly if it were not having to contribute to paying off McClatchy's ill-conceived debt.

I'm also concerned on a personal basis for a couple of reasons: (1) Laying off dozens more journalists will make the competition for the few jobs hiring writers/editors that much tougher. Six months of job hunting has gotten me nowhere, and now there's even more competition. (2) I can't imagine my morning without the newspaper I've been reading every morning for 29 years, but cutbacks could easily extend to circulation areas. One of a newspaper's biggest costs is distribution. Metro papers have been shrinking their home delivery areas for many years, and it's conceivable that the N&O number crunchers will decide home delivery in Wilson is not profitable. Yes, I know I can get most of the news on my computer, but it isn't the same and never will be the same.

What's happening to American newspapers is a tragedy for an honorable profession. Newspapers, which used to be watchdogs, arbiters and sounding boards for local communities, have become commodities to be traded on stock exchanges, subject to the whims and predictions of the people who gave us mortgage derivatives.

My wife and I were wondering whether the N&O would be in the trouble it's in now if the Daniels family had not sold it. Our guess is not. Newspapers lose when their owners are ensconced in a corporate office hundreds or thousands of miles away, when their editors are merely pausing here on their way up the corporate ladder, when reporters are corporate pawns to be shifted here and there among the corporate properties. When I was hiring reporters, I gave preference to local applicants. They knew the city, they knew the culture, they had contacts, they understood the history, and they were less likely to move on elsewhere, reducing turnover. In newspapers' heyday, there was less mobility among journalists and greater connection with readers. Newspapers' critics frequently complain that reporters and editors are "out of touch" with the community. When each community is merely a rung on the corporate ladder, that's not surprising.

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism also released its State of the Media report Monday. It's a sobering report that harbors little optimism for the print media and for the essential service that news organizations provide. A free and active press is essential to the working of democracy. Although critics of the "mainstream media" claim citizen journalists, bloggers and the wonders of the Internet will replace the "MSM," I see no one who will be able to do the hard, time-consuming work of professional reporters — attending long and boring meetings, questioning public officials, spending hours searching through public records (not all of which are on the Internet), checking on arrest warrants, court filings or grand jury indictments, and doing all the other time-consuming tasks that only paid journalists have the time and dedication to do. Unless a way is found to save newspaper journalism, unless Americans wake up to what they are about to lose, we will have a less-informed populace less capable of making wise voting decisions, especially on the local level.