NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - This is a scary time to be a newspaper journalist.
Stung by a gloomy advertising climate, publishers are taking out their machetes. The New York Times, for example, said on Sept. 20 that it will pare its newsroom by 45 employees.
The industry's grim financial realities make me wonder about the politics of its layoff announcements. If the publishers use their financial woes as an excuse to cut back on the coverage of disenfranchised people in America, it's going to be a very bad time to be poor.
This is going to be a severe test for newspapers' commitment to serving the nation's underclass at a time when the executives would no doubt prefer to bask in the glow of the stellar reporting on Hurricane Katrina.
Gloomy climate
The New York Times' parent (NYT: news, chart, profile) said it will cut a total of 500, including individuals at such properties as the Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune. The move represents about 4% of the company's workforce. The cuts will begin next month and continue for the ensuing six to nine months.
Almost acting in tandem with the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer (KRI: news, chart, profile) , a Knight-Ridder holding, also announced its plans to buy out 15% of its newsroom employees. The Romenesko web site ran a headline this week noting that Inquirer Editor Amanda Bennett, for better or worse, "lost sleep, vomited because of job cuts stress."
And newspaper publishers probably thought that things couldn't get much worse a few years ago when the public stopped believing what it read in the morning dailies. That was when notorious traitors to the profession, like the New York Times' Jayson Blair and USA Today's (GCI: news, chart, profile) Jack Kelley, acted like serial fabricators.
In other words, the industry's mere credibility problems now seem like yesterday's papers.
In the current every-man-for-himself newsroom environment, the sin of Detroit Free Press sports columnist Mitch Albom, who didn't attend a college basketball game but wrote a story earlier this year as if he had (one which was dutifully published, too), practically counts as some sort of comic relief.
What an industry. Beancounters get away with inflating the circulation figures at many American newspapers. And subsequently, journalists get shown the door.
Serving the community
Newspaper companies talk a lot about how they hope some doomed employees will accept, in the more dignified newspeak of the publishing business, "voluntary" exit compensation packages.
I hope that the paper won't use the layoffs as an opportunity to abandon the less sexy coverage areas, such as urban affairs and metropolitan news.
President Bush was rightfully blasted by the media for turning his back on the poor people of New Orleans when the administration utterly failed to exhibit any sort of an adequate evacuation procedure prior to the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina.
It would be oh-so-easy for any metropolitan daily to reduce its concentration to the news that affects the less desirable readers - you know, the people who neither subscribe to the paper nor read it online. And if you don't even own a computer or have an Internet connection, you might as well move to the Australian Outback.
It goes without saying, naturally, that these people also don't shop in the retail establishments which supply newspapers with a steady stream of advertising.
Company goals
It's hard not to be cynical, even though cynics are typically cranky, overbearing, unpleasant know-it-alls (Sorry).
But I'd argue, just the same, that media companies, which seem to care a lot more about pleasing Wall Street than Main Street sometimes make it easy.
"This represents a continuation of the initiatives the company began earlier this year to find ways to operate more efficiently," the New York Times said this week in a press release. "As a result of these efforts, the company identified areas where it could function effectively with fewer people. Earlier this year the company reduced its staff by approximately 200 positions or about two percent."
I don't know how reassuring it is to the world of journalism, but it should be noted that the same New York Times news release ended like this:
"The company plans to manage the staff reductions in such a way that it continues to provide journalism of the highest quality, to function smoothly on a day-to-day basis and to achieve its long-term strategic goals."
Whew. It's a relief to see that the Times intends to put out just as great a newspaper as always with fewer resources than ever. Now, the Times senior management team can turn its attention to climbing Mt. Everest, stopping the violence in Iraq and parting the Red Sea.
