LA Times: Study finds newspaper editors optimistic
Despite declines in revenue and repeated staff reductions, most U.S. newspaper editors remain optimistic that their publications will regain their footing by shifting news to online editions and by employing innovations such as video and computer-assisted reporting, a new study has found.
More than half of 259 editors surveyed rated the overall quality of their papers better now than three years ago, with a majority also saying the quality of writing and the depth of reporting had improved, according to "The Changing Newsroom."
But the examination by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism -- believed to be the most comprehensive of an embattled industry -- also found that "more is disappearing than is being added (in U.S. newspapers)." Foreign and national news coverage, in particular, have suffered.
Newspapers have faced unprecedented challenges in recent years as readers and advertisers shifted to other outlets, mostly on the Internet. Many newspapers have more readers today than ever, counting their dot.com operations, but they generate only a fraction of the revenue online that they do in print.
The challenge "is to find a way to monetize the rapid growth of Web readership before newsroom staff cuts so weaken newspapers that their competitive advantage disappears," the Washington, D.C.-based researchers concluded.
The urgency of the situation has been dramatized in recent weeks by cutbacks at some of America's most prestigious papers, including The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. The Times is slashing 150 editorial employees from its editorial staff of roughly 830. Eighty-five percent of papers with circulations of more than 100,000 have cut staff in the last three years.
The cutbacks have most papers focusing closer to home -- 62 percent said they were devoting more space to community news and about half said they had added more state and local news.
Nine in 10 newsroom executives at larger papers also said they considered it essential to maintain investigative reporting -- a feature that sets them apart from blogs and other new media sources. Those efforts have benefited from the proliferation of data bases, which allow newspapers to examine neighborhood crime statistics and restaurant closures.
Editors said they had seen gains in other areas as well: the ability to post stories quickly and to update them frequently, particularly during big breaking stories such as fires and tornadoes. The constant demands of the Web have pumped both added pressure and vitality into newsrooms, executives reported.
The new era also includes a greatly expanded interaction between journalists and the communities they serve. In a few cases, papers have invited readers to help with reporting, as when the News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla., asked readers to help it get to the bottom of a sharp rise in property assessments. Within 24 hours, the paper had received a never-released audit that helped make the story.
Such gains, however, can not disguise the losses that have come with declining revenue.
Nearly two-thirds of the papers surveyed have cut back on foreign news, with once-proud foreign staffs at papers such as The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun and Newsday now shuttered.
Half of the papers surveyed had reduced their coverage from around the U.S., and more than one-third slashed business news. Science pages have become a rarity.
"In effect, America's newspapers are narrowing their reach and their ambitions and becoming niche reads," said the study, compiled by Tyler Marshall, a former foreign affairs reporter who left the Los Angeles Times in a buyout.
Newsroom executives said their greatest concern is over the loss of older, and often more highly paid, journalists -- who contribute the institutional memory, wisdom and sense of mission that helps form the backbone of the best papers.
One newsroom editor asked what has been lost said simply: "The concept of who and what we are."
File photo
Editor James O'Shea gives a farewell speech in the newsroom the Los Angeles Times in this Jan. 21, 2008, file photo. The Times fired its top editor after he rejected a management order to cut $4 million from the newsroom budget.
