This is the time of year when people reflect on their circumstance in life, and often times give thanks for their many blessings. The end of year ritual has not eluded me, as I sit here thinking about many aspects of my life as the holiday season begins.
For my work life, the past year has been a year of change. There is much thanks in my heart as I reflect on those personal changes. More on that another time.
Friends get together around the holidays; that isn’t breaking news by any stretch. Our personal circles expand and our lives change as we take new jobs, move on and evolve. While I look forward to the future and all that comes with it, it is also good to return to familiar times of past and the people that made a difference in our lives. You see this reflected in everyone’s social media feeds right now, with family gatherings as well as reunions of past co-workers and friends.
As I write this, it is Thanksgiving Day, the largest newspaper of the year as most publications exclaim. That is a true statement, if measured by weight, thanks to countless Black Friday inserts from local stores. The fact is today’s local newspaper is probably the high water mark of the year for revelance, for circulation and readership. And it has nothing to do with journalism. The largest newspaper of the year that I read was light on news, as most newspapers are anymore.
Politico had a story this week suggesting that individuals should stop subscribing to their local newspaper if they cared about local journalism. I don’t subscribe to that belief, but I do think the article made some great points. The biggest of those points being the conduct by many corporate owners and their decision to squeeze all the profits out of newspapers in the immediate near future, along with the likelihood that they will abandon them once they are no longer profitable. In the article by Jack Shaffer, he wrote about Alden Global Capital but it could have said the same regarding several chain owners: “Deliberately starving its newsrooms and shriveling its news pages, Alden’s “milk-it business modes” is designed to extract the value of a newspaper over time until the day—poof!—their papers vaporize and Smith and Freeman climb into their Scrooge McDuck vault to count their riches.“
This is a reality for more than just Alden owned newspapers and something I personally had mandated to me by a former boss. I sat in a meeting in my office shortly before I left my last newspaper job, where the corporate mouthpiece told me that this was exactly the plan I was expected to execute.
The impact of this type of corporate ‘milking’ is evident with the daily newspaper you are reading, if in fact you’re still reading. The actual newspaper being delivered is smaller; in width and page count. Evidence of the heavy handed corporate money grab is also evident by the dwindling amount of local by-lines you‘ll see. And for me personally, that milking was made evident in one of those social media posts that I mentioned earlier as friends gather to remember and give thanks together this time of year.
On Facebook today, I saw the reunion of the sports department of the now defunct News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I say defunct, since the decision to stop being a newspaper was two years ago and the decision to stop being a real newsroom ended just over a year ago. Yes you technically still find a website with one reporter still doing the occasional story. But this is a good example of corporate milking as detailed in the Politico article. In this case, it just happened all at once instead of the slow disappearance that is happening at most newspapers.
This group from the old News-Sentinel sports department had recently gathered for their reunion; to share, to give thanks and no doubt reminisce. Not everyone was able to make it, but most were in attendance. The talent of that staff was / is impressive, and would be hard to assemble again in any single newsroom, no matter the size of the publication or the market they cover. Cheers to that crew who have moved on but have not forgotten their friendship or the impact they made on the community.
Retail -not the same. Newspapers -not the same. Car buying -not the same. Cable television -not the same. All have less people just as we have so not sure the blame can be squarely on us for poor ownership/Leadership. The internet altered all of who we thought we would be today. Didn’t really see that coming to the extent that it is now. It is easy to poke us because we hear it a lot and the contingent of folks who are out of our business tend to be, many times, the pounders of the death drum. But-not sure your post breaks ground on a fresh solution but instead, marches in unison with others that long for the past to…
Not a champagne guy; sweet or bitter! And I’m certainly not bitter. I actually believe that once the true rock-bottom is hit that you’ll see a resurgence. In fact, there are a few cases where that is happening already. But the fact remains that companies are out there with a philosophy of squeeze all the money out of the business now with no plan or care of the long term future. Expenses need to be reduced, new revenue explored as a practical way of life today so that there is a tomorrow. I wish all companies were exploring more to figure out that long term solution. But even more so, I wish they had done that 20 years ago. Eco…
Well Pete, although I think the world of you, an industry that gave you a wonderful career, It appears you have had a taste of bitter champagn during this Thanksgiving. This is a sea change for nearly any industry in the US today and not just the media business. I could argue that they extended our runway. Some family newspapers would have gone dark if not for some of the G newspaper companies and others -who came in to help with clusters and in many cases ...made better. Good journalism is still in existence and not hard to find. Problems, concerns, pressure... you bet. Don’t bang the death drum just yet. Many of us believe that we are in transition,…