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the newspaper crisis at a glance In 2008, Gannett Co., Inc., the nation’s largest newspaper chain with 85 newspapers including the Detroit Free Press, cut staff by 10 percent, a loss of 2,000 jobs. The 200 job cuts at the Detroit News and Free Press are not included in the total. Tribune Co., owner of The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, and several other large papers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2008. In October 2008, the Christian Science Monitor, one of the nation’s leaders in international reporting, announced it would scale back from printing five days a week to a weekly print edition and would expand its website. In February 2009, the New York Times Co. borrowed $225 million against its new headquarters in Manhattan to cover debt payments. Full-time journalists at daily newspapers shrank by 4.4 percent in the last year to a total of 52,600, the largest decline in 30 years, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Print and online ad revenue dropped more than 18 percent in the third quarter of 2008, the worst decline in nearly 40 years, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
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and Sunday and create a new interactive website. Staffers like Larcom can apply for positions in the new company, but job losses are expected. Larcom, who has spent this past year at U-M as a KnightWallace journalism fellow, planned to return to the paper rather than take the buyout offered to him several months earlier. “I anticipated downsizing but I didn’t expect the paper to close,” he says. “I was happy at the Ann Arbor News. Now I have a month to decide whether to apply to the online company, try to get a job at U-M, or do something outlandish.” While his recent fellowship, which included trips to Russia and Argentina, has helped “strip away fear of change,” Larcom feels the weight of the situation. “People built careers, families, and lives from this business and watching that change is sad and difficult. But out of these setbacks can come some amazing things.”
Industry Convulsions Jodi Cohen, (’98) also a Daily alumna, worries about how the demands of technology will affect the quality of newspaper
journalism. When she started as a reporter at the Detroit News in 1998, she had to share a computer with other reporters. Now as the higher education reporter at the Chicago Tribune, she says editors are considering sending reporters out on the streets with laptops to cover their beats. Cohen, who hopes to make journalism a lifelong career, says reporters at the paper are scared. In the past few months the Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, and several other major papers, has declared bankruptcy and laid off dozens of journalists. A redesign of the Chicago Tribune, meant to attract more readers, was recently scrapped. “I love what I do and I try to stay as optimistic about the future as I can,” she says. “People want news whether it’s in the paper, online, or some other way. But I worry about whether reporters will still be able to work on in-depth stories as the newsroom shrinks. The demands on reporters are so much higher.” As professional journalists wrestle with the new demands of the digital age, some aspiring journalists wonder whether they’ll ever make it into a newsroom. Breeanna Hare (’07), who grew up reading newspapers online rather than in print, is in the middle of the journalism master’s program at the Medill School at Northwestern University. Hoping for a career in either newspapers or magazines, she is watching the convulsions in the industry. “Whether newspapers will survive is a daily conversation for me,” says Hare, who has racked up substantial student-loan debt. “I wonder if there is even going to be a job for me. The message to me is that people will always have to get the news but the way they get it will change. It’s scary to a lot of people because it’s changing so fast.” Steve Henderson says a stint at the Chicago Tribune in 1996, helping to design the paper’s new website, prepared him for the digital age. But he admits all the changes are still nerve wracking. “It’s a paradigm shift and we don’t know how to make money on this platform,” he says. “I’m also worried about how the people who can’t afford computers will be able to access the paper. But progress is always hard. Either you go with it or you get left behind.” n