Media meltdown and efforts to save us
It is difficult for me to maintain my optimism about the industry when I see a layoff from somewhere around the country literally every day. So far the count for this year alone is nearly 6,000 newsroom jobs, and that’s just the announced amount. Assuredly the real total is much higher.
The LA Times is cutting 150 newsroom jobs and is reducing published pages by 15 percent. The Minneapolis Star Tribune union is working to cut 10 percent from the newsroom budget.
I thought community newspapers were relatively immune. But this downturn in the economy (not a recession?) has proved me wrong. Something is happening, and even my paper is not immune.
I do appreciate my editors’ candor. They give us regular updates on how the paper is doing with ad and subscription sales. Without giving away too many details, reporters have been told to watch their mileage (41 cents a mile now) and watch the number of hours they work past 7 p.m. (we get a 50-cent boost in pay for each hour between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m.). We also have an open business reporter position that may remain open for quite some time.
But I am not one to complain without attempting to find a silver lining — or a solution. The silver lining: We are holding steady on circulation.
One thing is clear: we cannot keep doing the same thing and expect different results (Einstein quote). I’m not so sure about the solution.
McClatchy has started a wiki called McClatchy Next. Check out the folders on the sidebar: Philosophia, Ideas that did not work (empty), Ideas that might not work, Ideas that worked and Mad as hell.
In the Mad as hell section, Julia O’Malley posted some interesting comments:
It doesn’t help that right now people are so demoralized. Everybody’s checking their retirement accounts and surfing for jobs in public relations. There’s this sense among the rank and file that the concern on the corporate level is survival and survival alone. The message in the layoffs was that no matter how talented or enthusiastic someone is, no matter how committed to the mission, that won’t help them keep their jobs. How can you send a message like that, then expect people to be super excited to come to work?
I agree, but I also think it’s better to know what you’re up against instead of in the dark and suddenly get hit broadside by layoffs.
Nick Eaton from The Spokesman-Review posted that his organization is throwing eight “young journalists” together to reinvent their newsroom. The eight journalists are to change how content flows through the newsroom. The catch: Do it in 11 days.
As Steve (Smith, Eaton’s editor) has said, the current structure no longer works. A strengthening focus on the web coupled with layoffs in the fall has put the traditional newsroom in disarray.
Colin Mulvany posted about this initiative on his blog earlier in the week.
(Smith) asked each of them, who basically have no stake in the processes of the past, to suggest ways to streamline the newsroom operation. He wants them to find a way to make it more efficient, thus letting people spend more time on developing quality journalism instead of just shoveling content.
Shoveling content. That’s a good phrase. Yesterday I finally caught up to my backlog of stories that I had been trying to finish since the end of the school year, about a month’s worth.
The only way this can change is if we change our priorities. I cannot pretend to know what those priorities should be. I constantly hear that online news doesn’t pay the bills, and yet that’s where most of our competition is.
What is the answer? I don’t think anyone knows. But at least some people are trying.
“We must all hang together, or assuredly, we will all hang separately.” — Thomas Jefferson
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:00 am
[…] all in this together. like Kate Martin said on her blog, Electric Fishwrap, today: The only way this can change is if we change our […]
July 4th, 2008 at 5:52 am
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July 5th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Unfortunately, today’s young journalists are mostly unqualified for the positions they hold. This has been proved with recent events.
So the Spokane effort is likely to fail. Once again, we shall see that simply “shaking up the status quo” is not a solution in itself. Today’s failed and failing newspaper execs are not capable of realizing this concept.
July 5th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Thanks for posting.
Define unqualified. Not good writers? Not good researchers? Waste time surfing somethingawful online? Don’t understand beats? Everyone has to start somewhere.
Shaking up the status quo might not be the answer. It might fail. But at least they are trying. Who else can say as much?
And what if they succeed?
July 5th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
I’m not sure we have to worry about the “what if they succeed” part. But you never know. After all, cereal and tires emerged from failed attempts to make other things.
To me, unqualified could mean someone who was hired immediately after graduation to a metro, even though it wasn’t long ago that metros wouldn’t do this. Unqualified means someone who’s hired simply because that person can be paid a low salary, yet that person is not worldly enough to realize it.
Unqualified can be someone who’s never led a desk shift yet is trying to find the “flaws in the system.” Unqualified is definitely someone whose sole point of reference is the after-the-fact critique of “how something looks.” Simply saying the next day: “That page didn’t wow me” is a fast sign of someone who is not qualified to be in a newsroom — ever.