Many U.S. daily metropolitan newspapers seem to be in what Philip Meyer, author of “The Vanishing Newspaper,” called a “death spiral” — unable to escape a cycle of falling advertising revenue, staff cut backs and circulation loss. Large corporations are consolidating formerly independent newsrooms and slashing important coverage areas to finance their debt from these acquisitions. “Wrap all these factors together,” Paul Farhi of American Journalism Review, wrote recently, “and you’ve set in motion the kind of slash‐and‐burn tactics that will hasten, not forestall, the end.” In its 2008 “State of the News Media” report, the Project for Excellence in Journalism estimated that from 2000 to 2007, U.S. dailies shed about 5,500 employees, or about 10 percent of their workforce.
We are only starting to feel the social consequences of this declining investment in news gathering, including superficial and fragmentary coverage of education, public health, the environment, business, labor, social trends, crime and politics. With fewer reporters scrambling to cover larger beats, newspapers have begun to compromise their watchdog role and are missing important stories. As David Satterfield, former managing editor of the San Jose Mercury News, summed up newspapers’ cutbacks recently: "It’s the best time to be a crooked cop or crooked politician, because your odds of getting away with it are better than they’ve ever been.”
Next: Needs Assessment – Bay Area Journalism Decimated
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