The wrong way to save newspapers

By Jennifer J. Foster

Published: June 26, 2008

Much has been made about the decline of newspaper readership over the past 15 years, and there are plenty of sad examples out there wherein the prevailing wisdom about how to save them—by cutting them until they bleed, and then cutting them to the bone—is costing journalists their jobs.

Unfortunately, their lofty protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, the decisions of corporate suits to cut newspaper staffs are also costing Americans—not only in coverage of local events, but also their oversight of their government.

I didn’t major in business. I don’t have an MBA. I haven’t spent any time counting beans of any sort, so I just don’t get it. So let me ask you, my intrepid readers: Can anyone out there point to another industry wherein a downward slide in the quality of the end product actually helped said industry survive?

But corporate boards overseeing newspapers continue to demand more with less, continuing their dogged trudge into irrelevance.

Today’s example of this misguided principle comes to us from Florida, where Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.—the flagship of which is the Palm Beach Post—announced plans to cut 300 of its 1,350 full-time jobs. Publisher Doug Franklin said in a company memo that “roughly 130 of these reductions will come from The Post’s newsroom; with more than 60 each in Advertising and Production, and more than 40 in Circulation.“

Think about that for a minute. News will lose more than twice the number of positions that advertising will and more than three times the number of positions that circulation will.

Franklin delivered the usual company line in delivering the devastating news:

For all employees of PBNI, we will be evaluating the possibility of foregoing salary increases in 2009 ... We are among the last metro newspaper companies in Florida to announce staff reductions. We now face the reality of saying “good-byes” to many of our loyal friends and colleagues who have served PBNI so well ...

We should take this opportunity to salute our past, and recognize the many successes that we’ve shared in recent years as a result of the hard work and dedication of so many people here. We’ve been blessed with fabulous resources and great latitude to do our work-probably more than we should have expected for a newspaper of our size. We took those resources and produced a great slate of products with them-and this is something that we can be proud of forever. None of this would have been possible without many talented people working together to create the greatness we achieved.

Blah, blah, blah.

As usual, folks reading the news on a local blog saw through the kum-ba-yah BS:

Holy s**t! That’s basically half of the newsroom/second floor! How in the hell are they going to continue daily operations?

I think it’s safe to say they won’t be ‘continuing daily operations’ as you know it.

I am a former Postie. If they cut 130 positions in the newsroom, who the heck will be LEFT??

I just don’t understand how a staff that small will cover news in a competitive market of 1 million-plus people in the second largest county (physical size, that is) east of the Mississippi.

What I want to know is how those that are left behind will have any desire to work twice as hard later this year, even moreso now that the memo says they may not even bother with raises.

These folks are definitely NOT corporate newspaper management material. Too much common sense.

Read the full memo, and more than 140 angry reader comments, here.