Buy a Paper Already!!!!

A rare daytime post as I have the night shift today and so am home this morning.

By now you will have read that the parent company of the Philadelphia newspapers has gone into bankruptcy. This isn't good. If you don't subscribe to the paper already, please sign up pronto. Our house has two subscriptions, one print and one electronic, so Mr. J and I don't have to fight over it in the morning.

One very alarming possibility is raised by Tom Ferrick who used to work at the papers and is now at WHYY, which seems to have become a primary employer of former reporters and editor. Ferrick has a blog entry, "A Sad Day at the White Tower," on WHYY's It's Our City blog. In it he writes:

In recent years, the internal dynamic of union politics was this: the crafts and Teamsters often teamed up to isolate the Guild so that it ended up eating the cuts and layoffs the company demanded as its revenues began to decline. They were very good at it. It is one reason the Inquirer Newsroom is about half the size it was when this decade began.

When it comes to the Guild, management’s main goal probably will be to end or cripple the seniority system so it can lay off senior staffers (many of whom make between $70,000-$80,000 a year) and replace them with cheaper labor (at $26,000-$46,000 a year). They tried hard in the last contract talks to do it. Under Chapter 11, they have a new chance.

Seniority counts quite a bit in journalism, especially local reporting. It takes time, often years, to build up the kind of contacts that allow for good, in-depth stories. You have to know the cast of characters, their histories, and how they have worked together (or not) over the years. The coverage of the Fumo trial is a case in point. Someone coming in new to the city will have to spend a lot more time researching databases and digging into the archives to know the nuances of witness testimony and statements from Fumo himself.

We've lost too many seasoned reporters already. There is a terrible turnover on the local suburban paper I read, which means coverage is thin since the reporters are always on a learning curve and leave before they really get the lay of the land. People like John Micek of the Allentown Morning Call and Mario Cattabiani of the Philadelphia Inquirer really know state government; they've been covering it for years. There are others as well, at those papers and more besides. We need all of them. New blood is always good but in the best of circumstances there is some overlap between a retiring reporter and the new kid so the ropes can be learned and the contacts (hopefully) passed on.

We need a robust press, and reporters with seniority are part of that.