I’ve been looking around at how other Gannett newspapers are handling reporting on the job cutbacks and other changes happening apace. It’s pretty much all over the board, but two former Citizen-Times editors are writing columns to explain to their readers what’s going on.
Bob Gabordi, former executive editor of the Citizen-Times and now the top editor at the Tallahassee Democrat, and Tom Graser, a former C-T editor and now the top editor at the Marion Star in Marion, Ohio, both have recent columns in which they talk about what’s been happening.
That raises a question in my mind: why the deafening silence from current Citizen-Times Editor Phil Fernandez? Why not reach out to your community, your readers, your supporters? Instead, Fernandez and C-T Publisher Randy Hammer remain silent, which doesn’t do a bit of good.
Here’s Gabordi, on his blog. Fernandez does not have a blog or a column.
Gabordi, who I admired as a friend and colleague, and an editor I felt was one of the best newsroom leaders I’ve ever worked for, always inspired me. There’s little inspiration in the C-T newsroom right now, from what I hear.
What we need to be doing is figuring out how and where great journalism – public-service journalism – fits in and how to make it relevant to our digital readers, not lamenting its demise or protecting what used to be.
I was asked on a survey the other day – for the umpteenth time – whether I would advise young people to study journalism in these days of upheaval. Yes, I said, yes, yes, yes. The world’s need for trained journalists is greater now than ever. Just don’t get wedded to any single technology.
The Internet is not killing journalism any more than the invention of automobiles killed transportation because fewer people traveled via horse-drawn carriages after the Model T went into mass production. Quite the opposite, in fact, is true. Travel exploded and so, too, can journalism.
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The issue is learning how digital audiences consume – or would consume – quality public-service journalism, stories such as the Rachel Hoffman investigation and the fragile Wakulla Springs environment. Our state capital bureau has stayed intact. Even as we make staff cuts we are looking at how to best protect watchdog reporting at the local level.
Just as important, we have to get advertisers to buy into our new print-digital business model. This is no small thing, but, somehow, I feel a large and engaged audience will be an attractive commercial target as the economy recovers.
Meanwhile, we’re working with journalists and journalism teachers and students across the country to learn what will resonate and how to tell meaningful stories in a digital environment, as well as in print. We intend to be a leader in figuring out how to effectively report digitally the kinds of stories that are so vital to a democratic society.
These are difficult times for those of us who work in the newspaper industry, who witness very up close the economic quagmire created by a transition that has moved too slowly and requires greater investment at a time when revenues are too thin.
I’ve seen – indeed, participated in – too many journalists being shown the door through layoffs and other cutbacks; four very talented newspaper people from our newsroom were let go last week.
If we’re going to change this, we have to start by stopping the hand-wringing that has filled journalists’ columns and blogs for way too long, and engage our audiences – the old and the new – with the best journalism we know how to do.
And here’s Graser’s column. Graser is a personal friend and journalist that I also admire immensely.
I know that almost every regular reader of this newspaper has a reading pattern they follow every time they pick up these pages.
In the coming months you are going to be seeing some changes to the Star. Some are coming about because they needed to be done, others are a result of the difficult economic times we live in.
The number one thing we will be doing is straightening up our style. It has been a long time since there has been a redesign of The Star. We are not planning anything as drastic as that.
Our page designers will be going through training. We are going to reset some standards, develop some new rules and get everybody on the same page.
As you might already know, the size of a newspaper is strongly dependent on the strength of advertising. It’s not news that advertising has weakened throughout the country over the last year. I don’t expect it to get any stronger for the first few months of 2009. So we are planning on keeping the newspaper compact and as chockfull of local news as possible.
We might have to move things around a bit to keep as many features in the newspaper as possible. Our intent is to better use the space we have.
None of this should come as a surprise to regular readers of this or any other newspaper. We might have to make a few things smaller and we might have to move a few things around, but our commitment to be this community’s local news leader remains in place.
Why can’t we hear from our local newspaper editor?
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<<<<I was asked on a survey the other day – for the umpteenth time – whether I would advise young people to study journalism in these days of upheaval. Yes, I said, yes, yes, yes.>>>>>
Are you an idiot?
Yes, I said, yes, yes, yes, yes.