In our small and beautiful city, what passes for professionally-produced news is poorly written, poorly reasoned, and fawning of authority. That’s been true for years in Whitewater, much to the delight of local officials, who’d prefer a good headline at the Gazette, Daily Union, Register (or even the Banner) to actually doing a good job.
More accurately: for the lazy, middling, or superficial a good headline is proof of a good job.
Over at Urban Milwaukee, Bruce Murphy writes about how Gannett is likely to gut the Journal Sentinel:
Not many editors — in the traditional sense — are used. Writers for a particular beat may make story decisions (within Gannett guidelines) and a “writing coach” or “content coach” may edit stories by various reporters. In an attempt to appeal to younger readers, newspapers may have a “beverage reporter” (covering beer and the bar scene) and fashion reporter, while the state capitol desk might get just one reporter.
To get a sense of how much the Journal Sentinel’s staff might be cut, I compared its current editorial staff (editors, writers, photo, design and online people) of 117 people with Gannett papers in two mid-sized cities. The Louisville Courier Journal, in a metro area of 1.3 million, has just 63 total staff covering these same functions. The Indianapolis Star, in a metro area of 1.76 million people, has 89 staff covering these functions. Given Milwaukee’s metro population of 1.55 million, you’d expect the staffing to fall somewhere between the other two cities, meaning the Journal Sentinel loses in the neighborhood of 35-40 staff….
Odds are the people let go will be the most veteran, highest-paid staff, the ones most knowledgable about the community they are covering….
Enterprise reporting? The Journal Sentinel has 13 staff on its watchdog team. “That’s going to be a luxury,” Hopkins says. “In 33 years, USA Today has never won a Pulitzer.” The Indy Star lists just one investigative reporter (and a list of “watchdog” reporters who are clearly just beat reporters). The Louisville paper lists two, but one sounds like a beat reporter.
See, in full, Bruce Murphy: How Gannett Will Shrink the Journal Sentinel @ Urban Milwaukee.
That’s a bad situation for Milwaukee’s residents, but it’s one with which we’ve had to live in Whitewater for years. The supposed news sites that I listed in the first paragraph don’t speak truth to power – they cower before power, writing obligingly, servilely, fawningly.
And yet – and yet – those officials who dream of a world without inquiry, scrutiny, and analysis dream a dark dream in vain. They neither deserve nor will have the world for which they so selfishly yearn.
We are a better and more creative people than that; we are a principled and inquisitive society.
Tomorrow: Methods, Standards, and Goals.
You can bet that a lot of J-S workers will be cut before Gannett takes over, in order to give Gannett a “clean start”. The whole JS-Scripps-Gannett deal smells like a classic “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap flip job. If you recall, there were quite a few casualties after the J-S-Scripps deal among the J-S staff. I think Murphy is correct that the blood has not yet even started to run.
The same dynamic played out in the broadcast radio industry over the last 15 years. Clear Channel, the Infinity Group, and Cirrus gobbled up radio stations by the hundreds. CC had 1200 stations at one point. They appeared to bite off more than they could afford and downsized considerably lately. What they did do was put together an exceedingly “streamlined” staffing model, where programming was done in a central location and satellite-streamed to all of the stations owned by them that were programming the same format. The only thing local about the stations anymore is the commercials, which are dropped into the programming by a robot. All that is left of the local staff is ad salesmen and a station-engineer of record, who is likely not even an employee. The result of all of the concentration/automation is many fewer local jobs, shitty local news coverage, and programming that is the same on hundreds of stations across the country. Meh!
That is the radio version of what we can expect when Gannett gets done “increasing productivity” at the J-S. Tons of lifestyle features, advice columns, nationalized sports reporting and absolutely nothing of any consequence in the way of investigative or political reporting. Local biz reporting will consist of reposted press-releases.
Thanks much for your comments. That is their future, isn’t it? Readers, who once had better than this, will have to craft, support new publications, of their own creation & better standards, than anything Gannett will offer. We were once a great nation of pamphleteers; we will become a great nation of robust, independent media. If not by choice, perhaps, then by necessity.
Long Live Blogs and Independent Publications (Shepherd Express, Isthmus, The Progressive, Cap Times)!