Predictable Downsizing at the Pee Dee

The downsizing at The Plain Dealer likely was predictable when the Newhouse family, billionaire owners of the Cleveland newspaper, brought Terry Egger (2006) and Susan Goldberg (2007) here as publisher and editor, respectively. The paper, we learned last week, planned to reduce the number of pages by 35 each week.

That’s a significant reduction. It means 1,820 fewer news pages during a year. The cuts are suggesting a particularly bad judgment call for elimination of one of two opinion pages.

The plan also calls for a 20 percent reduction in the editorial workforce. That also is significant and follows a recent buyout that reduced the news staff by 17 percent. “Pretty gloomy,” says a reporter of the staff morale. Reductions likely mean layoffs and no or small pay increases. Younger reporters are most worried, it is said.

Both recently hired bosses – Egger & Goldberg - have had the experience of eliminating staff at other news outlets.

I’d speculate the Newhouses decision to hire Egger and Goldberg was tied to their experience in handling downsizing elsewhere.

Egger, whose full name is Terrance C. Z Egger, was recruited here by Robert Woodward, former Pulitzer Inc., president. Woodward worked the sales deal that resulted in the famed Pulitzer news chain and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch being sold for $1 billion dollars.

Both Woodward and Egger became multi-millionaires as a result of their work in completing the Pulitzer sale.

The Newhouse family was part of the Pulitzer sale. Newhouses’ Advance Publications had a deal with the Post-Dispatch to share 50 percent of its profits after closing a competing newspaper in St. Louis. The Newhouses apparently liked the way Woodward worked the deal and then employed him to seek a replacement for Alex Machaskee as Publisher. Woodward selected Egger for the PD publishing job.

Goldberg was brought here as The Plain Dealer’s first woman editor from the San Jose Mercury News last year. She was executive editor and a vice president of the newspaper. It had recently had changed ownership twice. So she, as Egger, came from a newspaper that had changed hands.

Goldberg had experience also in reducing a newspaper’s staff.

In 2005 the Mercury, under Goldberg, lost 16 percent of its newsroom staff with 52 buyouts. In 2006, under Goldberg, there was another staff reduction in the Mercury workforce of 101 with 40 editorial positions eliminated for another 8.5 percent cut.

Thus she has had experience in sharp staff reductions.

There also remains a question of whether severe cutbacks at The Plain Dealer are preparation for a sale. It is a subject of discussion at the paper. The paper faces an economically declining city and the Newhouses are anything but sentimental when it comes to business.

The St. Louis Journalism Review reported on Egger’s substantial financial success at the Post-Dispatch:

“From various company reports and government filings, these figures were gleaned: Egger got $3.2 million in cash for stock-based compensation when Pulitzer was sold. He got a Lee (newspaper) retention bonus of $675,000 and a $75,000 transaction incentive. He could get as much as $900,000 to cover taxes associated with his extra compensation. Add a $197,000 bonus in lieu of 2004 stock options, and an $112,500 performance bonus and a $283,013 from his supplemental pension plan.

“His common stock at Pulitzer was valued at $11.4 million... and there’s probably more,” the reporter noted at the time.

You earn that kind of money by making hard decisions for the boss. Egger is the man the Newhouses choose to make those hard decisions.

So The Plain Dealer has been set for worker reductions and they will take place over time.

Newspapers nationally are in a financial crunch and workforce reductions have become common. Some blame the internet for reduction in advertising, thus revenue of newspapers.

Others see bad business decisions and a failure to change for their decline. Still others complain that newspapers fail to offer pertinent news that would make it essential to read a paper daily.

All this may foretell the death of newspapers as we have known them.

They are weak voices, often useless in their prime function – to tell people What is happening, Why it is happening and Who is making it happen. The three Ws of a strong voiced newspaper.

This decline is especially true of the local press. One can get information on national and international news from various sources – maybe not the best, as evidenced by the debacle of the Iraqi war – but there are alternative sources aplenty, if people are willing to seek them out.

You can’t have a democracy without the essential information about what is going on in your community. It’s the lubricant of free speech and debate. Without it you don’t have a functioning democracy. Nor can you have a society of equality. The lack of information also breeds inequality.

The constant retreat by newspapers – via elimination of news pages and experienced help – suggests the need for radical change.

One outcome of the retreat of the daily newspaper may be more alternative news outlets in print that provide narrower selections of coverage - publications that don’t depend on mass audiences. They may be dedicated to coverage, say, of just courts, or only politics or certain governmental bodies, or real estate development in all its ramifications. Others might be limited to other crucial community activities and seek only limited audiences.

These publications wouldn’t have to be produced daily. They would likely have internet outlets. Nationally, the Politico, a small “newspaper” of politics provides a model. It has national political coverage on a website but also distributes a printed form three days a week.

Ironically, in a way, we might be going back to the rise of news in colonial times when vigorous and partisan journalism thrived in small publications.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole roldoATroadrunner.com
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