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.

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.

We refugees from journalism

During a round of introductions at a meeting yesterday, I described myself as "recovering from a 33-year in journalism." In retrospect, I think a better description might be as a refugee from a 33-year career in journalism.

Like residents uprooted from their homes by war or famine, I have been uprooted from the career I chose, enjoyed and thrived in (at least to some degree). Like war refugees, I find myself somewhere else, a place I'd never been before, unable to return to the place — the career — I had known for so long. Like any refugee, I cherish the memories of the good times and try to put aside the pain of the final days of my former life. Despite their longing, refugees have to put the past behind them and channel their energies toward new and different goals, never looking back at what might have been.

Across America, there are many thousands of refugees like me, journalists who worked hard, held responsible positions and enjoyed the adrenaline rush of breaking news and time-absorbing investigations. In the past 10 years, great newspapers have become hollow shells, their newsrooms depopulated as if by a neutron bomb (remember that proposal — it was in the news?) that killed off the workers and left the walls and desks and files behind. During that time, the gradual transition away from printed classified ads and print advertising in general became a waterfall as the advertising revenue base collapsed. At the same time, consumers became so inundated with information that the news in print seemed redundant. Readership and circulation fell.

Publishers, many in a panic, slashed newsroom jobs to compensate for the loss of ad revenue. Eliminating news coverage just turned off the remaining loyal readers who still liked to sit down with a print newspaper and absorb the variety of information included. In some cases, even those newsroom cuts were not enough, and daily newspapers dropped back to semi-weekly publication status or closed their doors entirely.

Thousands of us refugees are among the unemployed and under-employed. Many of us are in our fifth, sixth or seventh decade, when getting hired in a new job is about as likely as getting pregnant. The skills learned in a lifetime in a newsroom are not easily transferable to the few jobs that are in demand in a still-struggling economic environment.

But like a war refugee, I'm not going to harp on "the good old days" that will never come again. We refugees make the best of what we can find.

Something's missing from online news

Since leaving the newspaper business, I've been reading more news online because I don't have access to the print editions of some newspapers, and I've dropped one of my newspaper subscriptions. Although free online news is seen as the monster devouring newspapers, with one popular news Web site dedicated to proposals to save newspapers, my experience has been that you miss an awful lot by reading news online, even when you're reading from newspaper Web sites.

Online reading has one huge disadvantage: You read only what you're looking for, not what you happen to stumble across. A print newspaper reader usually starts at the front page (OK, in some cases at the Sports front) and reads sequentially through the paper, opening up each page in succession. Some pages contain news the reader is interested in or is searching for. Some contain nothing of interest and are quickly flipped through. Other pages include interesting news that the reader was not anticipating or that he was not aware of. The beauty of a daily newspaper is that these serendipitous moments are informative and enlightening. They broaden our perspectives. They make us better informed on a wider variety of topics. They might even give us insight into ideas or perspectives we've never thought about. Your chances of finding serendipitous moments in an online search are largely nil. The strength of online search engines is that they find what you're looking for. That is also their weakness; sometimes what you're looking for is not what you need to know or what you'll find most interesting.

Online reading also denies readers access to most of the advertising in the newspaper. I've discovered that grocery stores' weekly fliers are available online; I don't have to buy a newspaper (or go to the store) to see what's on sale. But I still prefer to hold the fliers in my hands and compare prices, not flip from one supermarket Web site to another. Ads printed in the paper, known as ROP (run of press) ads, are another missing element in online newspapers. Web sites carry annoying advertisements, but not as many as are in the paper, and these print ads are often informative. And they're less intrusive and annoying than online ads. They announce new products, new businesses, new prices, etc. The Readership Institute has recognized that newspaper readers actually want to see the print ads because they consider them informative and helpful, just as the news stories are.

Surveys indicate more and more people are getting their news from online sources. Too bad. They don't know what they're missing.