Where have all the watchdogs gone?*

Jodi Enda at American Journalism Review chronicles the decline of watchdog reporting on government regulators - including those that oversee mining and oil operations. As media companies decided to cut back on all that boring reporting (and the expense of paying for reporters to cover those boring beats), we ended up with less coverage overall. Instead, the journalists increasingly arrive after the tragedy and start to ask 'why?'.

Funny how that happens.

From the story:

Nine years ago, AJR documented how newspapers and wire services had shifted from covering government "buildings"--shorthand for a blanket approach to reporting on departments and agencies--to covering issue-oriented beats. (See "Where Are the Watchdogs?" July/August 2001.) Reporters abandoned their desks in what once had been bustling pressrooms in stately federal buildings all across the capital and worked from modern news bureaus in staid rooms that often resembled insurance offices. At the time, bureau chiefs explained in what might be described as lockstep language that the change was a way to bring alive coverage of dry policy issues, to engage readers who had tuned out incremental Washington stories.


"There's been a real castor-oil quality of coverage," Kathleen Carroll, then Knight Ridder's Washington bureau chief and now executive editor of the Associated Press, said in 2001. "If you look back at the way Washington stories were written in the past, you see that it's just boring as hell."


Bureau chiefs trumpeted their move to issue-related coverage, saying that by leaving the daily drudgery to the wires, they had more time and more resources to devote to investigative and enterprise reporting.

But toward what end? Did journalists use their newfound freedom from daily coverage to keep closer tabs on what really was happening behind the imposing façades of federal buildings? Did they do a better job of telling readers what was going on before and after, rather than during, press conferences? Did they forgo the dull, incremental stuff to better serve the American people, to make sure their elected and appointed officials were using taxpayers' money wisely and honestly, using sound judgment, serving the public good? Were they better watchdogs?


The evidence suggests the answer is no. Certainly, there have been some standout stories in the past decade--Knight Ridder stood virtually alone in questioning the Bush administration's march to war in Iraq; Copley News Service sent a corrupt member of Congress to prison. But it is no secret that the story of Washington newspaper bureaus in the 2000s is one of cutbacks and closures, and less coverage.

*Update: Jodi Enda will be a guest on today's "To The Point" to talk about her article. The segment will air just after 12:45 p.m. Pacific on KCRW 89.9, or stream it here.

Trimming paper to trim costs

Ed Padgett at the LA Times Pressmens' blog reported yesterday that the Los Angeles Times will once again trim the width of the paper to cut costs:

As the Los Angeles Times continues to seek ways to remain in the black the newspaper will trim an additional four inches from the width of the newspaper. Readers will note a one-inch reduction in the width of the newspaper immediately, which will save the newspaper millions of dollars from the expense of producing the newspaper in saved newsprint costs.

Any further reduction in newsprint width down the road may result in the Los Angeles Times reverting to the tabloid format.

Press-Enterprise pullout

As part of the continuing cutbacks at the paper, the Riverside Press-Enterprise has announced it will stop delivering to several cities in San Bernardino County. The paper has eliminated a sizable chunk of its SB County reporting and editing staff already.

From the memo:

In January of this year, we were faced with the choice of leaving San Bernardino County or implementing a very aggressive price increase to allow us to cover our costs of publishing and continue delivering in San Bernardino County. Unfortunately, a significant number of subscribers in parts of S.B. County refused to accept the increase in price and cancelled their subscriptions.

Consequently, after further review, we have made the decision to discontinue home delivery in certain parts of the San Bernardino market due to low penetration levels. We will continue delivery in those areas where subscriber acceptance remains high, but unfortunately we will eliminate home delivery service in Chino Hills, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana and Rialto on Monday, July 13, 2009. The final print edition of The Press-Enterprise will be delivered to subscribers’ homes on Sunday, July 12, 2009.

Read the complete memo here.

In addition, rumors abound that the PE wants to sell its new headquarters, which the paper moved into two years ago, and move back to the old digs next door.

Globe to NYT: This is a contract we can refuse

The union at the Boston Globe voted 277-265 today to reject a wage and benefit cuts requested by the paper's owner, the New York Times Co.

The New York Times reports:

After weeks of labor tension and 12 hours of suspenseful voting, members of the Newspaper Guild at the Boston Globe narrowly rejected a proposed package of wage and compensation cuts, despite a threat from the newspaper’s owner, The New York Times Company, that such a rejection could precipitate a unilateral, 23 percent cut in pay.

The Boston Herald's lede is a little feistier:

The Boston Globe’s biggest union last night refused to bow to contract concessions demanded by its New York corporate masters in a high-risk slap that dares management to make good on threats to impose a 23-percent pay cut or even shutter the struggling broadsheet.

Cuts in St. Paul

MediaNews Group has sent out a demand that the St. Paul Pioneer Press slash $2.4 million from its newsroom budget, which would take a substantial chunk out of the paper's 138-person newsroom.

From MinnPost.com:

The Strib's Dan Browning, a former PiPress staffer, crunched some numbers and says St. Paul could lose up to 30 newsroom personnel — hard to imagine in a staff that's already skeletal. Would even Dean Singleton's e-edition subscribers pay for a PiPress with 20 percent fewer journalists?

However, Browning's calculation assumes surviving newsroom employees absorb no cuts. A memo from St. Paul's Newspaper Guild indicates management would rather pay everyone less: slashing wages, ending 401(k) matches, eliminating extra pay for night workers, and axing merit pay.

Rolling Stone shrinks

Rolling Stone Mexico is kaput.

Union: Daily News considering pay cuts

The union representing newsroom staffers at the Los Angeles Daily News told its members Friday that management wants to cut 15 percent from the newsroom budget and might resort to pay cuts to get there. From the email:

We have confirmed that our editors are looking at cutting the newsroom budget by 15 percent. We’re not sure how exactly that will play itself out, but at least we know what is being discussed outside our presence.

During the course of Friday’s negotiations, it became clear that Media News Group is looking to cut back our wages. There seems to be discord within the ranks of corporate management as to how to impose wage cuts. At the Daily News, it seems management is looking at implementing tiered wage cuts based on individual salaries and not a uniform percentage taken off everyone’s salary. But we have not seen anything in writing.

The guild is negotiating a new contract with MediaNews Group, which owns the Daily News.

LANG freezes employee vacation time*

After being forced to take a week's worth of unpaid leave, LANG employees will now lose out on some of their paid vacation. According to a memo from Inland Division Publisher Fred Hamilton, employees will no longer accrue vacation time starting April 5. The suspension will last through July 4.

Here's the Hamilton memo:

Colleagues,

Tomorrow and for some later today, along with your paycheck, you'll be receiving a letter about another step our newspapers are taking to tackle the difficult economic challenges that we are facing.

In short, we'll be suspending accrual of employee vacation time from April 5, 2009 through July 4, 2009. The letter will go into specifics and our human resource VP Louise Kopitch is available to answer your questions.

I want to let you know that I truly appreciate all the additional sacrifices and hard work that all employees have made during these unprecedented times.

Fred Hamilton
Publisher

An almost identical memo went out to the other LANG newspapers.

The union representing workers at the Daily News and Press-Telegram says the freeze won't apply to its members.

*Update: Jim Janiga, LANG's head of human resources, sent out a memo (read it here) that provides a general sense of how much vacation time will be lost. (via LA Observed)

NYT to cancel City Section

As part of a cost-savings plan that includes salary cuts to staffers, the New York Times has plans to drop the stand-alone City Section, the New York Observer reports. Meanwhile, the paper's citizen-blog project, The Local, lives on.

New year's ultimatum

Dean Singleton has given the unions representing about 1,230 employees at the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News until Jan. 16 to agree to $20 million in cuts or face "even worse consequences." Singleton apparently needs the savings so he can renegotiate terms on $130 million in loans.

Great expectations

Earnings expectations are a funny thing.

Imagine I told you you could earn a million dollars a month. The first time that million dollar check arrived you would feel jubilant.

Fast forward a year. Imagine I told you that you can expect to earn $800,000 a month from now on. Well, you're living a million-dollar-a-month lifestyle. The first time the smaller check arrived you would feel disappointed.

Do you start cutting back? Do you fire the charwoman and start filling your Bentley with mid-grade gasoline?

Fast forward a couple months and imagine your surprise when the check amount turns out to be a mere $750,000.

Do you panic? Do you sell the scrap gold? Is this (gulp) the end?

From the outside looking in, $750,000 still seems like a shitload of money - something most of us could get real comfortable living on. But expectations change the whole equation. Where I see three-quarters of a million dollars, Mr. Million and his debtors see a 25 percent loss.

All of which leads me to Alan Mutter's Friday posting about the likelihood of more newspaper jobs cuts. Mutter analyzes the recent earnings reports of six major publishers and finds that revenues are off by an average of 9.4 percent. Worse, operating profits are down an average of 25 percent. All of this despite sharp cost cutting at most of the papers, including cuts to the newsroom (which, some might argue, plays a role in dwindling profits).

However, Mutter also provides this important context regarding expectations:

When you look at the actual business of running newspapers, however, it is notable that the average operating profit among the six publishers is 18.5%, as measured by earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). For all that ails the industry, this surpasses the EBITDA of such companies as Chevron (18.7%), Boeing (11.2%), Wal-Mart (7.7%) and Amazon.Com (6.0%).

If publishers, their shareholders and lenders were wiling to accept significantly lower levels of profitability in the future, then further cuts would not be necessary in staff, newshole, circulation and certain other variable expenses. If this were not the case, which it likely will not be, then more cuts would seem to be on the way.

Layoffs by the Bay

Citing budget woes, the publisher of the Bay Area News Group-East Bay says 29 people will be axed from the newsroom as of July 11. That's about 15 percent of the staff, I'm told.

This follows nine layoffs at the Mercury News announced yesterday.

The memo from BANG-EB Publisher John Armstrong follows:

Colleagues:

As you all know, we are not immune to the financial challenges facing the economy in the East Bay and the newspaper business in general.

We have just completed work on our budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. We are forecasting a 10% drop in revenue over the next 12 months, which comes on the heels of a 17% revenue decline in this fiscal year. In my nearly five decades in this business, I’ve never experienced a downturn so deep and so broad.

Given this continued erosion of our revenue base – coupled with a more than 20% jump in the price of our most expensive commodity, newsprint – we found we had no choice but to take additional steps to sharply reduce our operating costs.

Consequently, I write to let you know we have started a significant restructuring of our operations, including employee layoffs from the management and staff ranks in all divisions and other changes to bring our overhead in line with lower revenue.

The employees subject to layoffs today were notified individually. Also, we sent a letter to the Media Workers Guild requesting a meeting to discuss our intention to lay off, on July 11, approximately 29 newsroom employees.

You will recall we achieved a reduction in our workforce in March through a buyout program. At the time we hoped that our revenue base would stabilize and additional job cuts could be handled through natural attrition.

Unfortunately, the decline in revenue accelerated in April, May and June, spurred by the prolonged real estate slump, its ripple effects on virtually all segments of the East Bay economy and the continuing migration of ad dollars to the Internet. When it became obvious that another reduction in workforce was unavoidable, we concluded we could not utilize buyouts this time because we needed to move quickly and we could no longer accommodate the randomness of buyouts.

In making the decisions on which jobs to eliminate, we were guided by three objectives:

• Protect the core strength of our franchise, which is local news and information.
• Maintain advertising sales presence in the markets we serve.
• Minimize the impact on our web sites and other digital services.

These are difficult times to be in the newspaper business. We are building audience and ad sales on the Internet, but our digital growth is far short of the level needed to offset our print losses. We’ll get to that point, but the transition is proving to be challenging and at times painful.

We are losing quality people in our organization, which is sad and unfortunate. We wish them every success in their new endeavors. I ask those of us who remain to roll up our sleeves, renew our commitment to our mutual goals and aspirations and support each other as one team moving forward.

John Armstrong
President and Publisher
BayAreaNewsGroup-EAST BAY

Cuts at the NYT

The New York Times will layoff an unknown number of people as part of its plan to trim the newsroom by about 100 employees.

"We hope that the worst is now behind us," says Editor Bill Keller. Romenesko has the full memo here.

More on the San Gabriel Valley blood bath *(Update), **(Update II), ***(Update III), ****(Update IV)

I now have a better idea of the scope of the cuts being made at Singleton's three San Gabriel Valley papers. At least 10 editorial positions will be eliminated before the day is out. Another 20 pink slips are scheduled to be delivered in the other departments.

So far, I've confirmed five newsroom cuts: two reporters, one from the Pasadena Star-News and one from the features desk; a page designer at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune; an editorial assistant at the Whittier Daily News, and the Tribune's librarian.

It doesn't look like any other reporters will lose their jobs today, but there are still more cuts to come (see updates).

Meantime, heads are rolling at the San Bernardino County Sun and Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. I know of at least one photographer and one writer who have gotten the axe.

Back in the San Gabriel Valley, anxiety among the reporters is running high, especially for those people working in the outlying offices (the management is holed up at the Tribune headquarters in West Covina, with the Star-News and Daily News treated as quasi-bureaus). Thus far, the management has been largely, if not completely, silent.

All of the newsroom cuts should be completed by the end of today, I'm told. However, employees should be prepared for a major announcement of some kind tomorrow.

*An anonymous commenter says that both the finance and marketing directors were let go.

**Two more cuts in editorial to report: A long-time photographer fell under the axe, as did a reporter/copy editor for the sports page. Both contributed to all three papers. Reports of boxes being filled and crying across the Tribune offices.

***Comments are coming in about the various cuts being made to the Inland Empire properties. Also, Fred Hamilton, publisher and CEO of SGVN, sent out a memo concerning the "restructuring" going on today.

Here's the meat of it: "This restructuring will help us to operate better and position us to grow revenues in our core newspapers, new custom products and on the Internet. In simplest terms, we're being as creative as possible in a really tough economy. Indeed, these are difficult times for many industries, including newspapers, and as part of our reorganization, there will be some job losses at all of our Inland Division properties. But we also feel, very strongly, that the steps we're taking will position us to reverse our business trends and grow our company again."

The company is "flattening the management structure" of its so-called Inland Division as part of the shakeup. Steve Lambert, who once headed the San Bernardino Sun, will stay on as VP of news for LANG. The memo says he is part of a team that will "take us boldly into the future."

****If the comments on this link are true, and the directors of finance, marketing and circulation (not classified, as I originally put) at the SGVN papers are now gone, that suggest a consolidation of operations between all five "Inland Division" papers. It would fit with Fred Hamilton being named publisher and CEO and his comments about "flattening the management structure." That would make the Sun the mothership for papers east of the 110 Freeway.

• Just got back home and saw that the comments section has blown up. I'm glad people are taking the time to speak their minds. However, while I'm big on free speech, I'd rather not become a vector for personal attacks.
  

For more recent updates, click here

The axe is swinging in the San Gabriel Valley *(Update), **(Update II)

At least one reporter I know at the Pasadena Star-News got a phone call this morning from the main offices at the San Gabriel Tribune in what appears to be the first confirmed layoff at the three papers that make up the San Gabriel Valley News Group (Star-News, Tribune and Whittier Daily News).

I don't know how many people will lose their jobs today, but this is already uglier than I'd imagined.

A source tells me the neighboring San Bernardino County Sun and Inland Valley Daily Bulletin might also be paring back their already skeleton crew newsrooms. I'll try to get a tally later today if I can.

This follows on the heels of major cuts at the Los Angeles Daily News, Daily Breeze and Long Beach Press-Telegram.

All of the papers are part of Dean Singleton's MediaNews empire.

*At least one other reporter and the long-time librarian at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune got pink slipped this morning. That brings the running total to three.

**The tally is up to four at the San Gabriel Valley papers and may hold there. Two reporters were let go, along with a librarian and a receptionist. I haven't heard any updates from the San Bernardino County papers, although a top editor was reportedly making the rounds earlier today... Just as I posted this, I was told a photographer at the Bulletin was "downsized."

Fearful in Seattle

The publisher of the Seattle Times prepares the way for newsroom cuts, blaming lower revenues in 2007.

The Times is co-owned by McLatchy, which has had a horrible year financially.

I suspect there's a phoenix somewhere in these various ash heaps, but it may slumber yet.