The layoffs at The Kansas City Star are going on as I write this. I find no joy in typing this -- only sadness for the people let go. This morning, I came across Roxie the Cockeyed Optimist, a blog written by the wife of Star columnist Mike Hendricks. Yes, he's still employed. But as she writes, her husband's employment continues at a 33-percent pay cut.
The Hendricks family learned the news Friday. In this post, Roxie recalls hearing the news -- the pay cut also took Hendricks to part-time employee status with no life insurance benefit or vacation days. "Accept it or take a buyout," Roxie paraphrases. "But if you accept, there may not be another chance for a buyout. No promises. You have until Wednesday to decide."
Roxie calls the Star's ax men the "Destroyer." She's also put a face on them: the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
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it is the reaper, anticipated for decades, but gradually forgotten and doubted when for years He failed to show, and not immediately recognized when he arrived in the guise of the internet. oh, the internet: how much easier it makes our job, the researching and fact-checking part of the job. thank God it has not figured out how to write stories for us. that is the only skill that distinguishes us anymore. it is a great profession, a privilege to have worked in it, a quarter century of fascination, excitement, education. a job that pays you to learn, and slaps your hand when you don't get it right. that's fair enough. increases the excitement. for me it all began 28 years ago in lawrence, then kc, phoenix, dallas, new york and london. what else would have taken me so many places, always demanding the best of me, the end coming fast but not without warning. the whole thing sad, but less sad that many of the stories i wrote
As someone who works at a mainstream paper, I can tell you that those who work at alternative papers do not have more passion than those of us working for a daily/weekly which happened to be owned by major corporations.
I tend to think anyone who gets into the journalism field has a complete dedication to print, mostly because if they didn't, they'd leave after the first week. 70 hour work weeks for very, very little pay? Constantly dealing with people who suspect we're biased? Seeing friends and co-workers being laid off? Pay cuts? Yeah. That sounds like a thrill ride.
I doubt very many people actually think of those staff writers- not the columnists who make millions or editors who write long-winded editorials about Obama. The first year journalists writing police reports and accident stories. The ones typing up Obits (still the most well-read page in the paper) and wedding announcements. We make very little and are loooking at a dying field; our jobs may not exist in five years. And we still come to work everyday, trying to get those stories written and sent online/to print so people can have the (acurate) information quickly.
Yeah, I'd say we have passion.
But Trevor, you're missing my point. If alt-weeklies are better positioned to survive, it's not because they're higher-quality journalism (I'm leaving that out of the argument entirely). It's because we've always known how to make money by giving away free information, so our business model works on the web as well as in print. What I'm trying to tell you is that O.W.A. is absolutely right about the business aspects of all of this.
C.J., I would argue that the Alt Press is better able to survive this than the daily inks.
For the most part, the journalism, editing, writing, and presentation of the Alt Press clearly surpasses that of the dailies. Further, the Alt Press has lived forever on being lean and mean and I think the folks that work at an Alt Press have much more passion for what they do. Sure, when it comes to political coverage the Alt Press typically fails and is basically indistinguishable from the mainstream hype. But, when it comes to reporting on a story, the quality of an Alt Press piece simply crushes that of ANY daily.
I know that the Alt Press has come on hard times as well, but there is still a lot of chicken left on that bone. It seems that this is a time where the inherent creativity and superior product of the Alt Press should result in a better survivability factor than that of the daily inks and their Underpants Gnome business plan.
Trevor, I know I can't remember the'80s clearly enough to say how well today's journalism compares. But here's one thing I remember very well about the '80s, and up through the mid-1990s: pages and pages of personals ads in the Pitch and other alternative papers (along with milder versions in the dailies). And even more pages of classified ads. Newspapers lost the tons of classified ad revenue with the rise of the Internet and free sites like Craigslist and eBay; a lot of the personals business migrated to sites like match.com and eharmony.
That had nothing to do with the quality of the news reporting or writing. It was very simply the result of changing technology. How well media organizations adapt determines their survival.
The economic crisis might accelerate the demise of all sorts of industries or make technological adaptation that much harder; in that way print newspapers are not unique.
O.W.A., I am fascinated that you think the quality of the journalistic product is not at all to blame. Do you honestly think that the quality of what passes for today�s journalism is on par with that of even the 80�s? Surely you must at least grant that originality and good writing has been replaced with a wash, rinse, and repeat buzzword salad.
Further, if television truly killed Gutenberg, is the economic crisis simply an accelerant rather than the cause? If not, are we to believe the economic setback to media is focused almost entirely upon advertisers dumping print ads?
You won't see me defending the quality of the Star editorial product. And I don't doubt there is anecdotal evidence that some have dropped the paper because some article offended their delicate political sensibilities, liberal or conservative, or just ignorant. We can all play the "I know a guy who knows a guy" game. But people canceling their subscriptions in fits of pique has been going on since the dawn of newspapers, and it just affects circulation marginally. Circulation has been declining since the 1960s or 70s, through the Reagan years and the Clinton years, and it has nothing to do with the ideology of the newspaper. It has to do with television, mostly. Newspapers have been dealing with that for decades and still have been handsomely profitable. What is causing newspapers to crash and burn right now is that advertising is evaporating. And because wheeling-dealing financial types have overextended themselves to buy what they thought would be forever-profitable newspapers (see Sam Zell, the McClatchy Group, etc.), they can't ride out the recession, and the economic setback for newspapers has gone from troublesome to catastrophic.
Again, you may be enjoying the Star's downfall because of your distaste for the political biases you detect, but the reality is: Readership is not abandoning newspapers, the advertisers are.
O.W.A., I must disagree with you and your anonymous minion. I know several folks in my JoCo neck of the woods, as well as all over the country, who swore off the Star (or their local rag) exactly for the cause and effect reasoning you call backward opinion.
Perhaps these folks are liars. Maybe the cause of these cancellations is due to a lack of Kohl�s ads. However, it makes more sense to me that these folks are spot on when they say the newspapers are blatantly biased and dictatorial in their message and oftentimes miss (or ignore) other points of view.
Alas, I suppose you and your minion have the real insight, though. Perhaps you, like your print rags, have it figured out that the product could be complete crap as long as folks pay to advertise. It really matters not if anyone actually buys or reads the thing.
In fact, the last door to door Star peddler to approach me actually used your logic. He argued that the coupons in the paper were actually worth more than I would pay for the paper, even if I didn�t read the paper.
OWA is right on.
If a leftward political leaning is hurting the Star, Why is the Wall Street Journal bleeding money too and NY Post and NY Newsday too? These rags were hardly Obama fans,
More people are reading newspaper content than ever before. It is a poor return on investment to advertise in print media anymore versus other means. That's the real source of the problem.
Your ignorant understanding of the print world's predicament does not justify your attempt to serve your politics.
The Rocky Mountain News didn't endorse Obama, and yet it has completely shut down. How do we explain this?
But Trevor, the answer to your specific question is No, the love of Obama expressed by the Star institutionally and by individual staff members has absolutely nothing to do with the decline of the Star. It has nothing to do with the newsgathering and everything to do with ADVERTISING. There isn't enough of it, and that has nothing to do with Obama and the positions of the editorial board. You might wish that there was some cause and effect because it makes your backward opinions seem more rational, but you clearly know nothing about what is going on in the publishing world.
You think GW was laissez faire?
You think the The Star�s eyes-wide-shut lurve for Obama has nothing to do with people putting down newspapers to try and find an unbiased source of news?
CRIKEY, I head out for a few weeks and the chromosomes start agglomerating. Gimme my �tard beating stick�I need to scatter these chromopolyps before complete dementia sets in!
Yes, clearly, the Star's troubles are because of their support of Barack Obama. It has nothing to do with the fast-and-loose financial rules that enabled McClatchey to overextend itself to buy Knight-Ridder and plunge its stock price below a dollar. It has nothing to do with the Internet's takeover of classified advertising (it's Al Gore's fault--he invented the Internets ) and the collapse of display advertising that is emblematic of the economic ruin brought about by 8 years of GW Bush laissez faire policies. Yes, let's blame it all on Lewis Diuguid. He must be the one pulling the strings. How else could The Star have been persuaded to believe that a black man was qualified to be president.
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