Death by a thousand (job) cuts

In today's (3-23-08) L.A. Times, writer Dennis McDougal laments the merging of the Long Beach (Calif.) Press-Telegram and the South Bay (nee Torrance) Daily Breeze as a cost-cutting effort by the parent company of both. Sad.

Decades ago I spent nearly four years at the P-T (Well, actually, the P-T was the afternoon paper at the time. I worked for the morning Independent.) I learned an awful lot about journalism, about writing, reporting, human nature, how to down drinks for dinner and still copyedit, and much more.

The newsroom then was not the clean, sanitized, cubicle-ized blah it is today. I worked the sports desk, and several of the guys (I can remember only one or two women in the entire newsroom and they were, of course, in the Lifestyle corner, protected from the vulgar, hard-drinking and harder-smoking newsroom) kept a flask in the bottom desk drawer and even smoked cigars across the desk from me. Unthinkable today.

Part of my initial job interview as copyboy (yes, boy) was to make coffee in one of those huge silver pots. The newsroom went through multiple pots nightly and it fell to me to keep it full, and it had better be good. I guess I made good coffee.

Despite all these and more idiosyncrasies -- oh, the stories I could, and maybe should, tell my students -- the experience was no doubt better than a degree in journalism (mine is in Creative Writing). I owe a lot to John Dixon, my sports editor, who taught me much about tight editing and ethical reporting.

So, first the Independent died in the early 80s, leaving only the P-T. Now the P-T is losing its editor and publisher and merging with a former competitor! All told 19 staffers from both papers will lose their jobs and probably end up falling into public relations (shudder). It's like I am watching a beloved old friend lose body parts and slowly die.

I started in newspapers in 1967, back in the days of "hot type." Then technology began to speed up and we went through "cold type" and then into computers. All these improvements were supposed to make things better, but technology can't replace good reporters or compelling stories. The money saved should have been used to improve the product, but instead it went to shareholders.

The downward spiral of newspapers began and the Press-Telegram is just the latest to start slipping down the drain. Newspaper companies made more cuts. Circulation dropped. More cuts. The product has become so weak from overworked journalists that no one wants to read the papers when they can be wowed by the Web.

Newspapers are still making a reasonable profit, just not what they were hauling in during the glory years. Shareholders whine. Publishers downsize. The product suffers.

I am going to lift a glass tonight and toast not just my poor old friend, the P-T, but all newspapers. It's all but over.