North Country newspapers face deep job cuts, budget pressures
Glens Falls Post Star (of 10/31/11)
The last couple of years, a simmering debate has unfolded here on the In Box and in other venues over the future health of the Adirondack-North Country journalism culture.
That often-heated conversation was revived this month by news that the Glens Falls Post Star’s corporate owner had decided to cut a third of the newspaper’s reporting staff. (News of the decision was first reported by blogger Mark Wilson.)
Dan Alexander, publisher of the Denton Publications chain of newspapers, based in Elizabethtown, blasted the decision in an editorial as “nothing more than greed.”
He questioned “the corporate culture that is killing the sense of community these organizations once had.”
More shocking than the cuts at the Post-Star and the 51 other Lee Enterprise-owned papers who made similar large-scale staff cuts across the country, was the announcement just days before that Lee CEO Mary Junck was awarded a $500,000 bonus and CFO Carl Schmidt was awarded a $250,000 bonus.
Of course, the Post Star isn’t the only newspaper squeezing its editorial staff.
This spring, the Watertown Daily Times eliminated its long-standing and highly respected Washington DC bureau. (Hat tip to TomL for pointing this out.)
“Well, the saddest part about all these lost bureaus, and now the north country’s, is the stories that never will be written because the paper won’t have eyes at the Capitol to see them,” wrote Marc Heller, WDT’s veteran Washington correspondent.
Lake Placid News publisher Cathy Moore is also cutting the reporter position at the weekly paper. (Corrected: the LP News is a weekly, not a daily.)
And the Plattsburgh Press-Republican continues to require that reporters take mandatory unpaid furlough days.
(All of these newspapers, with the exception of the Watertown Daily Times, are owned by corporate chains, headquartered outside the region.)
Why does all this matter? It means fewer journalists out on the beat, for one thing. That means fewer eyes on local government, fewer people tracking important stories.
But tightening budgets will also, inevitably, mean fewer really great reporters sticking around in the North Country. If you can’t earn a decent living, pay your mortgage, maybe earn enough to put your kids through college — you’re not going to stay, right?
Complicating this dreary news is the fact that some elements of the region’s media culture are thriving.
Denton Publications — also locally owned — has continued to build a stronger and stronger newsroom, breaking more important stories across the region.
NCPR, which is licensed to St. Lawrence University in Canton, has been adding staff and stringers, with new people on the ground now in the Plattsburgh-Burlington area and in Watertown.
Then there’s the growing clout of bloggers and “citizen journalists,” exemplified in this case by the professional-grade reporting and analysis of Mark Wilson, who broke the story of the Post-Star’s cutbacks.
What we know for certain is that the media culture — and the business of media — are changing rapidly, because of technological changes, new patterns of corporate ownership, new ways that people use media.
We also know that this process is hurting a lot of great reporters, leaving them unemployed and with few prospects.
What we don’t yet know is how well the public will be served going forward. Will there be enough alert, skeptical, curious people out there to serve as watchdogs, community bulletin boards, and information sharers?
As always, your views welcome.
Tags: adirondacks, economy, media
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Another momentous cutback is the Watertown Daily Times closing its Washington Bureau http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20120401/NEWS02/704019983 . The WDT has been slimming dramatically in the last two years. It no longer has a separate local section on Mondays and Saturdays. I often don’t agree with the editorial page, but the WDT is a must-read to keep up with St. Lawrence County and New York State news. I worry that it is on its way out.
One of the things I noticed in today’s Post Star was the elimination of its Opinion section and including parts of it in the Front Page section.
Reduced advertising revenue is probably a good deal of the problem.
As founder/editor of the blog that broke Mark Wilson’s story, I wanted to thank you for correctly attributing the original work to him. Let’s just say that not all regional media outlets were initially so diligent.
(More on this on my blog probably on Tuesday)
The sad decline of the Post Star illustrates the evils of corporate take-over and the need to keep more businesses under greater local control. Granted, the PS previous owner was a corporate entity as well but it was a smaller family controlled business and the publisher was a fixture in the community.
It is almost too bad that Lee Enterprises didn’t go bankrupt. It would be great if the employees of the Post Star could get together and buy it back and run it as an employee owned business. The advantage of employee ownership would be that there would be no need to make excessive profit. Employees could be paid reasonable salaries and after the initial buyout debt was paid there would be no need to make profit at all.
The sad decline….This decline has been going on for fifty years. First TV now Internet soaking up advertising dollars. Hopefully the amateur bloggers will pick up some of the slack, but no way around it -this is a loss. We need professional journalists and it’s not clear now how they get paid.
The story of the decline of print papers has been playing out everywhere, and for a very long time now. One of the first areas to see severe cuts were international news bureaus of the large daily papers and TV networks.
One thing that’s been built specifically to replace international news gathering is Global Post and I’d encourage you to read about them here: http://www.globalpost.com/feedback
The other, of course, is NPR which is richly supported by private grants for news coverage. So national and international news gathering appear ok.
But how does professional news gathering in the ADKs remain viable? Perhaps NCPR and http://www.adirondackalmanack.com and ADE will be the local news sources of record. But are these sustainable financially?
Pete K: a neighbor of mine pointed out there were also no coupons (only circulars) in yesterday’s edition too.
Dave Mason,
Sometimes violated but the general rule for “paper of record” is the requirement for it to have “paid circulation.”
Pete Klein-
That’s an interesting rule in the age of the net. Perhaps only paid subscription sites can be “sites of record”. There are hybrid sites, mostly ad supported as well as paid membership groups – not so different from the newspaper business with ad revenue and subscriptions too.
FYI Global Post is, like the NY Times site, partly available for free but only fully available to paid members. This seems to be a developing model and maybe it is so the can get the “of record” brand image?
But there is no paid news site in the ADKs. ADE’s site is free and I doubt many would pay for it. And by that definition NCPR can never be “of record”. Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore? I’m not sure. But trusted news gathering does matter , more than ever. And it is a real skill, not something easily picked up by anyone.
I pay for the NYTimes site and I would pay for the ADE site too if there were a mechanism to do so.
Pete Klein:
“Newspaper of record is a term that may refer either to any publicly available newspaper that has been authorized by a government to publish public or legal notices (often known as a newspaper of public record), or any major newspaper that has a large circulation and whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered professional and typically authoritative.” (Wikipedia: Newspaper of record)
The article does not include the word “paid.”
I pay for the NY Times site as well, happily. Web publishing ought to become profitable at fairly small numbers since the cost of distribution is nothing compared to print publishing. But the trouble is it has to compete with ‘free’ and that’s tough.
Maybe organizing a group of excellent journalist/writers around a fee-based ADK site is how the best people here get to make a living off this. It would have to be outstanding to compete with the free sources. I’m skeptical.
I wonder if/how a website might become authorized by the government to publish “public or legal notices”? Or must they be in print? I believe these notices are paid for, right? If so, there is revenue there as well.
The Hamilton County Express is a weekly paid circulation paper that does have a web site but it charges.
Yes, there is a charge for legal notices.
HCE is the only newspaper that covers all of Hamilton County.
The Utica Observer sometimes reports on Inlet.
The Amsterdam Recorder and the Leader Herald sometimes reports on the southern half of the county.
The Post Star occasionally reports on Indian Lake and Long Lake.
Pete,
You forgot to mention that the Post-Star ALWAYS reports on Hamilton County, so long as the story fits their “disappearing Hamilton County” agenda. You would know better than I, but I can’t remember the last time I saw something about Indian Lake or Long Lake in the Post-Star.
The WDT doesn’t need a Washington Bureau, it was a waste of money they should be spending on reporting the how and why local reps are voting on the issues.
Some papers, the Denton papers for example, but I suspect also the ADE, PS, PR, and others, rely heavily on legal notices. Those papers need local governments to declare them their municipalities’ ‘paper of record’ for the income they generate from legal notices. When the day comes that online notices suffice, that will be another major blow to local newspapers.
For decades we have watched with dismay the decline of local media/news outlets, print and radio in particular. During the same time, large media corporations have grown into mega-conglomerates. While public radio continues to increase its audience, on air and online, we can’t do it all. We sorely miss the dozens of small local stations that hyper-served communities across the region; ditto for the newspapers that have gone out of business or those that have had to decrease their reach.
I could go on and on about why I think this has happened–failure to respond to a changing media environment, greed, insidious disregard for the mission of journalism, and so forth. But, I think each of us must take some responsibility: so many people expect to receive news and information for free, while others expect their news to be delivered as bits of entertainment.
When I was growing up, we spent money every day to buy two newspapers. Like several of you who commented above, I gladly pay for access to the NY Times and other information sources online. But for many, the assumption is that the money spent for media access, which is funneled through phone and internet accounts, entitles them to free news on these electronic platforms. Maybe the solution is for news organizations to buy the delivery platforms.
Public radio’s financial model has worked for 40 years and new online news entities are starting to imitate it. (I’m sure you’ve been asked by more than one online news source to contribute, and I’m sure some of these are also asking businesses, organizations and foundations to contribute to their work, as well.)
The problem: the public radio model of the past four decades is a bit wobbly and many of us are looking for new ways to pay the bills. No brilliant breakthroughs yet. NCPR is holding its own because the station’s investment in building a local presence over the past 30 years puts us in a stronger position than those stations that only recently began to invest in this kind of service.
All ideas welcome about how to keep journalism sustainable. Some of the best minds in our country are working on this one. You’re in good company.
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Being the last of the small-market radio news directors that Ellen refers to above (in St. Lawrence County) that does more than just “rip and read,” the current scene scares me to death and has for a decade.
Our (Post-Star) site is searchable. Anyone who wonders whether John W. is basing his statements on even cursory reporting or is simply spouting his preconceived notions about The Post-Star can go there right now and search “Indian Lake” and “Long Lake.” I searched “Indian Lake” and here are the most recent three stories published:
http://bit.ly/I0VafA
http://bit.ly/HukPbk
http://bit.ly/x6UBXA
The first is a news story about an arrest and lawsuit involving a fireworks factory, the second a story about rafting this spring, the third a story about Indian Lake’s middle school program, all published in the last month. There were also various mentions in sports stories, and obits, and a brief mention in a broad story about the state budget tax cap.
By the way, it’s nice to read the collegial support from many commenters here.
Ellen,
As long as you mention radio, I miss the days of AM radio when it had real Disc Jockeys who knew their music and would introduce the songs.
In New York, I’m thinking of people like Murray the K.
The worst thing to hear now is the usual two men and a woman who talk and talk, and think they are funny when they are not.
John Warren –
I think Will is factually correct here. The Post Star’s journalism is far more nuanced (and important) than the paper’s critics give it credit for.
I think it’s fair to question whether your preconceived notion of the Glens Falls Post Star is skewing your public assessments of the paper — in much the way that you accuse them of skewing coverage of Hamilton County.
I also wonder whether before expressing this view of the WDT’s Washington bureau you went back and reviewed any of the reporting that Marc Heller has done ove rth eyears?
–Brian, NCPR
I remember during my stint as the 380th Bomb Wing’s public affairs officer at Plattsburgh AFB in the late 80s, attending dinner meetings of the Adirondack Press Club in Lake Placid, Ticonderoga, Plattsburgh, and Saranac Lake. I even had an Adirondack Press Club T-shirt. I assume that this organization is now long gone? If so, this would be a good time to restart it – in a very public fashion.
For years we have collaborated with colleagues in commercial media across the region. In some cases, we have been rebuffed by owners who perceived NCPR as a competitor. Period. We think the relationship is more interesting than that–our inclination is to share and collaborate. To this end, all of the content on ncpr.org is available for use on any other website in the region (all we ask is that NCPR be credited as the source). Two of our most important stringers, Chris Morris and Chris Knight, are reporters for the Adirondack Daily Enterprise.
I think Alan Gregory is on to something: if journalists across the region actively band together, everyone is stronger.
Alan/Ellen,
Something tells me that the In Box is the meeting of the Adk Press Club. (Be sure to leave something in Brian’s tip jar on the way out.)
The notion that “information wants to be free” was popularized by early 1990’s tech people, most notably Esther Dyson. Witness Wikipedia, Google News, Craig’s List (which killed classified ads), Youtube. The “free” idea grew well beyond content. I was co-leader of the Keene Broadband Project and there was a group that strongly believed internet access should be free and never mind that switches and cables and bandwidth cost real money (as does professional content). In some cities, there are still ongoing efforts at free service.
There are 5 “copyright” industries: music, still images, movies, written works, and software. All benefit from broader, cheaper distribution than ever before, and all are threatened by the notion of “free”. So far, music and news publishing have taken the worst hits. It isn’t clear how content producers (including journalists) get paid at all in the future, much less well paid. Superior quality helps but, gee, look at Youtube, ugh.
Even the best content in the world will never see the sort of $$ it used to. And that’s before considering the loss of advertising revenue to the net. Smartphones will change advertising again with customers seeking ads instead of ads seeking customers. It’s not a pretty picture. So real journalism may need to be voluntarily supported, but otherwise free. Maybe like libraries? I don’t like it, but I don’t see another way out.
I should add two other popular ideas in the early days of the web (1990s) that are relevant here:
1.) The separation of superstar content from the rest. The idea here was that the masses of every-day content producers would see declining income from their work, even with basically free distribution. However the same distribution would make superstars global and they would gain and ever larger share of diminishing content $$
2.)The rise of stars from unlikely origins. The idea here was that free global distribution has the power to turn unknowns into stars quickly (sometimes blowing up just as fast). Mostly this would threaten, say, music producers, who live by finding, and signing contracts with, new talent. The net makes the value add of the producer much lower. “Anybody can be a star”, etc.
I head on the TV 10 News at Noon that on the web people average about 5 minutes looking/reading the news but about 20 minutes looking at pornography.
Maybe the solution for online and print news is to display pornography between the stories?
It’s worth pointing out that what the internet taketh away, the internet also giveth back. The boom in independent news sources on the internet (that has siphoned off demand for other media) has happened simultaneously to a boom in freedom-of-information laws.
A whole spectrum of routine information from both public and private sources is now available immediately and for free (without the services of an intermediary) either as a result of the efforts of FOIA advocates like Robert Freeman and the Glens Falls Post-Star (ironically) or simply because rapid dissemination benefits the provider in one way or another. Government and public school budgets, stock prices, mortgage rates, little league scores (and videos), weather forecasts are just a few examples.
In news gathering, this trend is eliminating some aspects of the reporter’s job, while the advertising money that underwrote it has been siphoned off to Google, Yahoo, etc. The work of reporters who used to have to know whom to call, whom to bribe, etc. has changed. The fulcrum in the profession has shifted slightly away from gathering and more in the direction of extraction and analysis. Thee are jobs that are easier for former journalists and non-professionals to do in their spare time.
As news delivery relies more and more on analysis, the more reliable interpreters of raw information will find (or keep) careers in journalism.
Will and Brian,
First of all, I said, “You would know better than I, but I can’t remember the last time I saw something about Indian Lake or Long Lake in the Post-Star.” I stand corrected. Three stories in the last month. Plus the two stories and a blog post about census numbers.
There have been SIX stories critical of the Post-Star in the past two weeks from Denton, the Chronicle, MoFYC (2), and the Almanack (2), only one was written by me.
All those outlets actually cover the Post-Star’s area. All of those stories point to potentially serious ethical lapses in the management at the Post-Star.
The response from Brian Mann and Will Doolittle is to charge me with some ‘preconceived notions’. What about the five other stories? Were they all my preconceived notions as well?
I stand by what I’ve said about reporting in our local media.
If you disagree with the assessments of five local writers in the past week, you should present the evidence to the contrary as regards to corporate control of Post-Star, lax reporting standards that allow longtime APA opponents to “report” on APA issues, and using their bully-pulpit to publish the names of children, oppose local school districts, and to foster false notions about the Hamilton County disappearing.
Shifting the focus by calling my character and professionalism into question with vague assertions about what I think and why is not an appropriate response to the criticism of five independent writers.
John,
Citing the five “critical writers” isn’t solid ground either, man.
Thom Randall used Mark Wilson’s info. The Chronicle cited Randall’s story as its source.
Those writers only really did what amounted to one reporter’s work, mostly Wilson’s.
The TU was the only one I’m aware of outside of that information loop, but they had little detail.
The other piece I’m aware of was nothing more than a self-serving opinion written by a publisher hoping to draw advertisers away from the daily and to his weekly.
“We love our communities and aren’t concerned about profit…..,” kind of thing.
By the way, take a look at Will Doolittle’s stories about Hamilton County – I think my point is proven.
The fireworks story was reported statewide; it happened to involve Hamilton County. It wasn’t the result of reporting on Hamilton County by any stretch of the imagination.
The rafting story is a story about Hudson River rafting in Warren County, which is affected by the levels of Lake Abanakee. There are four quotes, none from Hamilton County. Apparently, that counts for reporting on Hamilton County.
The third story is a statewide story with Indian Lake as the only Adirondack school noted for excellence. It says “Indian Lake”, but we pretty well guess the reporter didn’t drive to Indian Lake to file that report. It came from a press release issued statewide and a phone call to Indian Lake.
So Brian, you still think Will is ‘factually correct’ and the Post-Star covers Hamilton County?
If the goal is to attract readers, I don’t see the point of one media outlet picking on another media outlet.
We all have our gripes and our favorites but arguing in public hurts everyone and only helps increase the public’s distrust of the”Big Bad Media.”
Not that we have any “big media” up this way.
As much as I disagree with much of John W. says and does, I do disagree with you, Pete, on “picking on” each other and griping about each other. Media feuds have a long, glorious tradition and I do not think they have hurt any of the combatants, in terms of readership, viewership or advertising. Look at Rachel Maddow vs. O’Reilly, or Jon Stewart vs. everyone else in the media. Look at the NY Post vs. the Daily News.
One of the strengths of this country’s media tradition, especially when it comes to newspapers, has been a willingness among reporters, editors and even the occasional publisher to call each other out. Few, if any, professions show such a willingness, even eagerness, to police themselves when it comes to plagiarism, shoddy reporting, bad writing, and so on.
So, as with other forms of free speech, though I may despise the content, I celebrate the writer’s right, and willingness, to put it out there.
My favorite job of all time was at the PS, and I lost it to lay offs 18 months ago. Unfortunately, this journalist’s career was ended that day, not just the job.
What the heck were they thinking to lay-off someone with Skyqueen as a byline?