To cut costs, newspapers cut days of print publication

This post was published in the Wilson Times Nov. 23, 2019.

If you like a good newspaper to linger over on a Saturday morning breakfast table, you might have to rearrange your table soon. McClatchy, which owns the Raleigh News & Observer, the Charlotte Observer, the Durham Morning Herald, and a total of 29 daily newspapers in 14 states, has announced it will stop publishing a Saturday print edition in the next few months.

For lovers of ink-on-paper news delivered to your door, this is the topper to a quarter-century trend of newspapers abandoning daily printed papers and putting profit-and-loss spreadsheets ahead of newspapers’ solemn duty to inform the public by reporting the news without bias or prejudgment. (Wilson readers are blessed to have a local daily that is not owned by a giant corporation that sees newspapers not as a solemn duty but as a potential profit stream.)

McClatchy Corporation has financial reason to drop days of publication, cut employment and trim investment in news reporting. On Oct. 8, the company reported a drop in stock price from $2.73 at close to 49 cents a week later.

McClatchy has been a train wreck for a long time. McClatchy, publisher of the Sacramento Bee since 1906, bought Knight Ridder, publisher of some of the most respected newspapers in the United States, including the Miami Herald and the aforementioned N.C. dailies. In March 2006, McClatchy paid $4.5 billion for Knight Ridder, which was known as one of the best newspaper chains, one that saw journalistic principles as an obligation. You’d be hard pressed to find a journalist on McClatchy’s corporate board.

Another worrisome newspaper development last week was the merger of Gannett with Gatehouse Media. Gannett, best known for USA Today, will be part of a conglomerate owning 250 newspapers. This degree of consolidation in news media once would have brought out anti-trust concerns, but now it’s just a routine business transaction.

On the cusp of the Great Recession, McClatchy overpaid for Knight Ridder and is still burdened with debt from that transaction. The once-powerful and profitable properties bought from Knight Ridder became unsellable in the depressed market and its sharp drop in newspaper advertising. The corporate office ordered layoffs and job consolidation to cut costs.

Just as in other newspapers, news employees were jettisoned to save money, making the newspapers less valuable to investors and readers as news coverage shrank. McClatchy consolidated jobs, such as publisher, which used to be a local position, a spokesman and business leader for each newspaper. McClatchy has already consolidated publisher and editorial positions in its North and South Carolina properties. Even these cuts and veering from traditional staffing were not enough to cover the rising debt.

So McClatchy has made the decision to “transition to digital,” meaning eliminating more costly print editions altogether. A number of major newspapers across the country have cut back on publication days. Dropping the Saturday print edition is a less drastic cut than some papers have taken. But the cuts are not over. It is apparent to my household, subscribers to the N&O for nearly 40 years, that print subscribers are expendable. When we went to renew our subscription, we found the three-month subscription cost about quadruple what an annual subscription cost a few years ago.

When I called to object to the price jump, I was expertly steered to a part-digital subscription. I now get the print edition Friday, Saturday and Sunday and have digital access all seven days. This hybrid plan for one year costs what print-only costs for three months.

The crisis in the newspaper business goes far beyond the “forget print” perspective at the N&O. Newspapers around the country are folding, leaving residents with no neutral resource about local government, crime, nonprofits, churches, jobs, industries, elections. The crisis in the loss of newspaper advertising is also a crisis in American traditions of vigorous public debate, informed voters and access to the ballot.

We are losing more than a day of print publication.

Newspaper careers crumble, but public needs news

It has been 10 years since I was employed by a newspaper (this once weekly writing gig does not qualify as “employed”). But I cannot help but listen to the crumbling of the industry where I spent 33 years of my life.

The latest crash I heard came in the form of a blog post by David Menconi announcing his layoff from the Raleigh News & Observer. In that post, Menconi, who had covered the music scene for the N&O for 28 years, cited the largest percentage destruction of a newsroom I had ever heard about, an 84 percent cut in newsroom staff: “More than a decade of layoffs, buyouts and attrition whittled our once-mighty newsroom staff of 250 down to around 40 survivors.”

It’s more common to read of newsroom cuts of 25 or 50 percent as newspapers slash costs to compensate for drastically reduced advertising revenue. Newspaper advertising revenue had been declining nationwide for 20 years, but the 2008 Great Recession, combined with the whiplash-inducing switch from print to digital advertising (Google and other online amalgamaters are making billions while newspapers, which do most of the reporting work, are laying off the reporters who expose the news).

Nearly all of the newspaper employees I worked with or knew through conferences, training meetings and associations are no longer in the business. Print-only news reporters are dinosaurs as remaining newspapers try to shift their focus to online readers and the almighty millennials. A recent column in the N&O (which we’ve subscribed to for nearly 40 years) infuriated my wife, as she read between the lines that the newspaper doesn’t care about any readers over age 40 or anyone who prefers a print publication to digital. The columnist seemed to be saying, “You old folks are going to die soon, anyway, so we don’t care about you.”

I worry about my former colleagues and peers who gave their lives to reporting the news in print and now are cut loose to drown in the sea of online advertising and video news, but I also worry about what this means to American democracy. The framers of the Constitution established freedom of the press as a fundamental right for one simple reason: Voters who don’t read the news can’t make wise decisions on election day. Without thorough reporting by professional journalists, the public cannot keep watch on government officials and government activities. Democracy is based on an informed electorate. As the Washington Post’s new slogan puts it, “Democracy dies in darkness.”

On a trip to Wilmington last weekend, I picked up a copy of the Wilmington StarNews. Among the other news in the Saturday edition was a report on the retirement of Si Cantwell, an editor and reporter with the StarNews for nearly 40 years. In his final column, he reminisced about his life in the newspaper business, then made this plea to readers: “I don’t worry about print readership diminishing. I worry about apathy. I worry about citizenry no longer interested in keeping tabs on elected officials, who don’t care about school redistricting or tax rates or film incentives. We still care about those things at the StarNews, along with restaurant openings and local sports scores, and I believe we provide the best coverage of that.”

I never crossed paths with Cantwell during my newspaper career, but we are singing from the same hymnal.

Revered editor would be aghast at today's newspaper

While reading a book about the 1960s civil rights movement, I came across the name of Claude Sitton, who earned his reputation as an unsurpassed reporter while covering civil rights in the South during that era and went on to be the legendary editor of the Raleigh News & Observer. The mention made me wonder what Sitton would think of the current N&O.

Sitton, whom I met but can't say I knew, had a reputation as a very serious, unstoppable pursuer of truth in the form of news. (Sitton died earlier this year.) His N&O scoured state government for scandal and wrongdoing, and his front pages were deadly serious. There were few examples of feel-good, touchy-feely, cute-kittens kinds of stories in the N&O of those days, and there was minimal coverage of routine crime of the sort many television newscasts emphasized — "if it bleeds, it leads." He was a champion of a free press, and his leadership showed why a free press was both a necessity and a rationale for constitutional protections for the news media.

Unfortunately, the N&O has veered from Sitton's example since he retired 25 years ago. The newspaper business has changed. The entire business model that served newspapers for two centuries — selling print advertising to support news reporting — has collapsed. Thousands of newspaper employees have been laid off. Just as damaging as the revenue loss has been a change in focus for many newspapers, including the N&O. Facing an inability to compete with broadcast and online news for immediacy and urgency, newspapers have shifted their focus to "softer" news — heart-tugging or whimsical stories that are not "big" news, but they're local, and they're not all over the Internet before they can get into print. A legion of newspaper consultants has insisted that soft, hyper-local news is the print newspaper's only hope for survival.

The N&O's latest redesign, which emphasizes color, subheads, and large, smiling pictures of the reporters, is an extension of this trend.

Sitton, I'm convinced, would have none of it. He wouldn't bury the infighting over the state budget or the refugee tragedy in eastern Europe deep inside the paper. He wouldn't make a cute story about a cemetery tour or a store covered in coffee mugs the dominant story on 1A. Call him a curmudgeon, but he knew why the Founding Fathers wanted to protect press freedom. It wasn't to make America safe for cute cat videos.

Like any newspaper editor, Sitton defended the First Amendment, which is under assault from the left (the influence of money in politics) and right (alleged liberal bias of the "mainstream media"). If all today's newspapers are going to do with their precious press freedom is to publish cute, hyper-local stories while ignoring their "watchdog" role in keeping local, state and federal government, as well as other powerful entities, such as corporations, universities, unions and the military honest, why have a First Amendment at all?

If repeal of the First Amendment were to come before Congress (and the states), would today's newspapers be able to defend freedom of the press by citing what a free press is doing to protect democracy and inform voters? I cringe at the thought.

Legislators are picking on the unemployed

The News & Observer's Rob Christiansen took state legislators to task today over their dismantling of state unemployment benefits. Christiansen's column recounts the General Assembly's deep cuts in unemployment benefits following the Great Recession, leaving laid-off workers little cushion when they unexpectedly and through no fault of their own lose their jobs. The state had built up a big debt to the federal government for the benefits paid out when the state's unemployment rate soared after the 2008-09 financial collapse. The feds had to be repaid, but legislators put all the burden of that repayment on defenseless laid-off workers. Legislators cut the size of benefits designed to let workers put food on the table and keep their homes when the economy collapses beneath them. They also cut the length of time the unemployed can receive benefits, from 26 weeks to between 12 and 20 weeks. And then they made it harder for our laid off neighbors to remain eligible for benefits. Instead of documenting two job-seeking efforts per week, the new rules require five job applications per week.

Left nearly unscathed were the businesses that pay the unemployment tax. North Carolina's unemployment tax was among the lowest in the nation, which was one reason the state ran out of money when tens of thousands lost their jobs. The low tax rate was raised just a pinch so as not to burden businesses or their owners.

Legislators' actions suggest that they consider unemployed North Carolinians shiftless shirkers who are enjoying the time off from work while the state provides for them. Anyone who has been unemployed or who have been close to workers who've lost their jobs know that isn't the case. People who are fired for cause cannot receive unemployment. Only those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own are eligible. In a volatile economy, things happen. Downturns make it impractical to keep the number of employees a business once needed. Whole sectors of the economy disappear. Think about the video store business or newspaper business or the local hardware store when a Walmart moves next door.

Hard-working North Carolinians need an opportunity to make a transition to another job, maybe even another line of work. It takes time, especially in a deep recession, to find a job. Workers who cannot afford to move to a distant job have an even harder time. You can only commute so far.

I know the feeling. I was unemployed for a year after the newspaper I worked for laid off close to half its staff. Without unemployment benefits, I might have lost my home. I was fortunate that I had a working spouse and savings for emergencies such as a layoff. But I didn't lay around. I searched for jobs. I pursued jobs that were outside my field of knowledge and comfort level, but I made the effort. I wanted to work. I continued to get up at 5:30 each morning and stayed busy. I caught up on home repair tasks. I volunteered. I did a lot of writing. I tried to develop a home business but didn't get very far. I investigated getting certified as a lateral-entry public school teacher. I did all that I could to find work but was still off payrolls for a year before I landed a job paying about half my previous salary. Unemployment benefits got me through.

I also experienced the despair and depression common among the unemployed — the feeling of worthlessness, of being unable to support myself and my family, of failure. Unemployment hits you emotionally as well as financially.

Legislators who want to punish North Carolinians because they've lost a job just don't understand what it means to lose a job. They want to hit good men and women when they're down and helpless.

Questionable spending takes down union leader

The Raleigh News & Observer probably has another journalism award in its pocket for its expose of the financial shenanigans of Dana Cope, executive director of the State Employees Association of North Carolina. Cope resigned yesterday, just days after the N&O on Sunday thoroughly examined the questionable spending of SEANC money: bogus invoices, dubious no-bid contracts with a company that had done work for Cope personally, senseless union payments for Cope's flying lessons and so on. The Wake County district attorney has asked the SBI to look into the mess.

Cope took no questions at his news conference, though he did admit that "I have blurred the line between my personal life and my professional life.” From the N&O's account, there seemed to be no line at all between SEANC finances and Cope's.

But there is more to this story than one man's lofty ambitions and his confusion over the extent of his power. Sunday's article detailed how Cope had gotten rid of two executive board members who had questioned his spending. He had the power to do that. He also had the power to spend SEANC money however he saw fit. His actions were above questioning. He could do pretty much whatever he wanted, including picking fights with powerful state legislators, to the detriment of the SEANC and its members.

Cope is gone, but SEANC has much housecleaning to do. It must start with replacing the board of directors who were led astray by Cope and who obediently followed his bidding. Secondly, the new board must redefine the post of executive director. The union exec should follow the directions of the Board of Directors, not vice versa. The board should set policy and require the executive to carry it out. The executive should not be allowed to spend any money without the permission of the board, either in the form of a budgeted line item or a vote of the board for exceptional expenses. All contracts should be subject to competitive bidding. Credit card purchases should be audited and justified.

It's easy to blame Cope for his alleged excesses, but the real fault lies with the Board of Directors and union members themselves. They failed to rein in their employee and allowed him to conflate union interests with personal interests.

After cleaning up its finances, SEANC must work to restore the respect and trust of legislators, relationships strained if not broken by Cope's aggressive and abrasive style.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2015/02/10/4545215_cope-resigns-as-seanc-executive.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Newspapers are selling off their real estate

Sometimes newspapers make the news, not just report it. So it was this morning when the News & Observer reported that its owners were accepting proposals to sell the N&O's landmark building in downtown Raleigh.

Other tidbits could be found in the story: The N&O now employs about half the number of people in the downtown building as it did in 2008. The Charlotte Observer is also considering selling its downtown offices.

All of this reminds us of the sad state of American newspapers. All — or nearly all — have sharply curtailed staffing. News isn't being reported. The newspapers' heft is a fraction of what it once was. Classified advertising is almost completely gone. Fat newspaper profits ("a license to print money," it was said) have dwindled. Esteemed newspapers have found their real estate more valuable than their business. The Washington Post has sold its iconic headquarters, lovingly reproduced in the movie "All the President's Men." Now North Carolina's largest papers are looking for real estate developers to give them an infusion of cash they can no longer get from advertisers.

I've been in the N&O building in downtown Raleigh a couple of times, never able to figure out the labyrinthine layout. I'm more familiar with the Charlotte Observer building. In 1970, the summer I interned at the Observer, the big, modernist building was half built. The production department and presses had moved into the new facility. News was holed up across the street in offices that had housed a fraternal organization. One of my jobs, as the lowest on the department's totem pole, was to run "copy" — the typewritten paper news articles — across the street, where each letter would be typeset in lead for the gargantuan presses.

Later, after I had resigned as editor of the Danville Register, I talked to the city editor and editor in the expansive newsroom one Saturday morning about possibly working for the Observer. Nothing came of the interview, but I saw the newspaper office completed nine years after I had couriered paper into the building, which had become a downtown landmark.

The sad state of American newspapers has been recognized since the sudden collapse began about 10 years ago, but the sale of newspaper real estate clarifies just how low once-great newspapers have sunk. Downtown real estate is the seed corn of journalism, the monuments to once-powerful empires now up for sale like an empty Kmart.