As newspapers around the country cut back and close bureaus, or close down all together, spending mornings sipping coffee and reading the local newspaper may soon become a distant memory.
The economic crisis is accelerating the decline of the newspaper industry, forcing local and national papers to cut costs or close, leaving many readers wondering how the industry will recover, they said.
The Boston Globe cut 32 advertising jobs last week and plans to reduce the newsroom by 50 positions. The 146-year-old Seattle Post-Intelligencer published its last print issue on Tuesday. Last month, The Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colo. closed. The Detroit Free Press cut home delivery to three days a week, and The Inquirer and Daily News in Philadelphia both declared bankruptcy.’
‘We are facing a serious financial situation and cutting costs where we can so that it will not negatively affect the value to readers or advertisers,’ Globe spokesman Robert Powers said.
The newspaper industry’s problems are a culmination of the Internet’s rapid growth, a decline in circulation and advertising, rising production costs and the current economic recession, Boston University journalism professor Judy Rakowsky said.
‘Newspapers for decades returned a respectable 10 percent profit, and Wall Street became dissatisfied and expected higher profits,’ she said. ‘That expectation has been a dynamic that hastened this decline.’
The number of people who read online news currently surpasses those who pay for the print edition. This is a problem because online advertisement revenue is not as large as newspaper advertisement revenue, according to the Newspaper Association of America website.
The Rocky Mountain News, which halted both its online and print editions, lost $15 million in 2008 and would have lost much more in 2009, Tim King, spokesman for Rocky Mountain News owner E.W. Scipps, said.
Powers said at the end of 2008, The Globe had 427 newsroom employees, and the layoff will leave about 380 employees. Currently, the Globe is not planning on eliminating its print version, but hopes to increase online revenue, he said.
Rakowsky, who worked in the newspaper industry for 27 years, including 14 years at the Globe, said reducing news staff carries negative consequences.
‘Fewer employees mean worse journalism,’ she said. ‘Good reporting is a very labor-intensive business.’
Despite concerns that eliminating staff members will reduce the quality of journalism, Powers said the Globe will maintain quality reporting.
‘Cutting the staff may impact the quantity of stuff that we do, but we won’t go back on quality,’ Powers said. ‘We are certainly trying to preserve the reporting that is at the core of our mission.’
College newspapers are also making cuts. The Daily Free Press eliminated its Friday print edition in February, and Boston College’s The Heights, which is printed twice a week, is cutting from 28 to 20 pages, starting with this Thursday’s edition.
However, despite the newspaper industry’s struggles, some students said they believe newspapers will remain.
College of Arts and Sciences senior Peter Fu said he prefers print to online news.
‘If you’re not connected to the Internet all the time, it’s much more convenient to read the paper,’ he said.
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