August 25th 2008
More MSM Death Rattles
T
his news today from one of McClatchy’s premier rags, The Sacramento Bee:
The Bee offered voluntary buyouts to the majority of its full-time employees today and hinted that another round of layoffs is possible as well.
The buyouts represent the latest round of cost cutting at The Bee, which is facing a big slump in advertising revenue. Two months ago the newspaper eliminated 86 jobs as part of an across-the-board layoff ordered by its parent, The McClatchy Co. of Sacramento. McClatchy imposed a companywide wage freeze two weeks ago.
But Bee executives said today they needed to make more cuts. The economic downturn has deepened and The Bee, like the rest of the newspaper industry, continues to struggle with the migration of business to the Internet and other media.
Some cheer the demise of the MSM; I am not one of them, especially regarding papers like the SacBee, which are the newspapers of record for the states they serve. I hope that most of those offered buyouts are useless hacks, no longer needed ad sales people and the like, but when you’re talking about a full-time employee at the Bee, you just might be talking about reporters with years of experience and tough savvy who cover state government like no one else.
Who is going to replace the MSM, for all its faults? What bloggers are ready to step up and cover the governor, the legislature and dozens of state bureaucracies? Exactly none. I don’t care how noble the bloggers are in their intentions, they won’t receive the deference provided to journalists, they don’t have the same protections, and they definitely lack the resources the MSM had in their prime.
Of course, I’m part of the problem. I subscribe to nothing now except the on-line WSJ. I read the SacBee just about every day, but I give them nothing for their efforts to report the news and make it available to me. And I don’t look at their on-line ads, either.
With the newspapers in trouble and the blogs not yet ready to pick up the ball, do we really face the prospect of having to rely on broadcast news for coverage of state government? If so, we’re doomed.
Posted in Blogosphere, Journalism, MSM | 2 Comments » | |
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Comments
August 26th, 2008 at 7:54 am
My hope is that the print media, rather than vanishing, will figure out that their coverage needs to be revamped to take away the ideological edge that is killing them.
August 26th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Whenever I’m in the neighborhood I read the Sac-Bee. Their byline on the internet is always a must look-at and usually a good read.
You are absolutely correct about losing the reporting infrastructure. A potential disaster.