It's called thinning the herd

It's simply not true that newsrooms are smaller than they were in the 1970s.

According to the Newspaper Association of America, here are the total newspaper employment figures (in thousands):

1970 357.8
1975 361.5
1980 402.8
1985 431.8
1990 455.7
1991 440.8
1992 433.5
1993 432.8
1994 430.5
1995 429.7
1996 423.4
1997 423.6
1998 425.4
1999 424.5
2000 422.6
2001 406.7
2002 388.9
2003 381.3
2004 375.6

Now note that these figures include all newspaper employees, and most newspapers shed a lot of production employees due to pagination and more efficient presses in the 1980s and 1990s, and still employment increased for a time. Note also that many newspapers folded in the 1980s and 1990s and still employment increased for a time.

A shitload of bodies were added in many newsrooms in the mid- to late-1980s, especially in high-growth Sun Belt cities. Some papers also had smaller sprees in the mid-1990s. One paper where I worked, not in the Sun Belt, more than doubled its newsroom, although it since has lost about 75 positions but is still larger than it was in the late 1970s. You can't really make a blanket statement going back that far.

The thing that's really different is that hard times in the newspaper biz were more regional then, and today it's a horror show all over. In 1982 I was working on a Rust Belt paper and it couldn't have been more grim. Papers were folding, no one was hiring in that region, my paper was on the brink of going under and eventually did a few years after I left. I went on vacation in a Sun Belt city and without writing ahead, just calling when I got there, lined up three interviews and two offers, one of which I took. It was like two different countries.

It's easy to romanticize the 1970s, but there's a place near me that sells vintage newspapers, and even some of the major metros were THIN back then. They had pretty small copy desks. Also, they were more focused on covering the urban core -- increasing suburbanization has stretched resources further.

 

Many times in layoffs, the bean counters are going to target the people who make the most money, then they either don't replace them or replace them with kids who won't command nearly the same salary. They may do the job just as well, but the bean counters don't care. They're just happy to save some money. For many of these decisions, money has a heck of a lot more weight than job performance. If the laid off person has a big family that would be costly to the company because of insurance costs, all the better to the bean counters.

I love the enlightened view that old=deadwood. It's just as stupid as saying that a woman can't do the job in sports or that somebody can't do a certain job because they have a certain about of pigment in their skin. But I won't let my view of young people in our business be tainted by the stupidity of a few. There's deadwood at many different ages and there are productive people at many different ages.

I'm not going to stop bitching about layoffs when good people are sent out the door.

 

I threw up a little bit reading that first post.

 

There is certainly deadwood at most newspapers. The problem is that layoffs/buyouts never work that way. You have to be the most complete idiot ever to think that such a thing is good for a newsroom.

 

I've never seen that attitude from Jared before. We all have bad days now and then.

To me this is illustrative of the anger and frustration that people are feeling. It's a natural inclination to look across the life raft and think we'd all have more Saltines if we fed that guy to the sharks. Normal to think it, bad to act on it.

I thought the post was unpleasant, too, but a lot of people are nearing the wigging-out state. Too much stress and sadness.

 

Perhaps, one time, he should sit across from someone and tell them they need to take the buyout. Knowing full well the employee -- and friend at some level -- has a mortgage, a son, a daughter and a fucking cat. And watch a proud man stare through you as a tear rolls down his cheek.

 

Wow, that was really poetic. I got a lump in my throat just reading that.

 

I have worked for more than 35 years in sports departments with as few as 2 people and as many as 60. And, as I said, every one of those departments today is larger than it was in the mid-'70s, dramatically larger in most cases. The real boom in hiring came through the '80s and early '90s in step with flush times in circulation and advertising. The boom was in many cases a prideful act of gluttony. One newspaper company president told me he ordered his exec editor to quit hiring -- the exec ed's answer was to give him the finger. Now the business is paying the piper.

My point at the start of this was to say newspapers are still better staffed than they were when the New York Times did the Pentagon Papers and the Washington Post did Watergate. Because we're ratcheting back to levels consistent with economic realities, as we ratched up with those realities 20 years ago, doesn't mean Doomsday Is Here. People smarter than me just have to figure out how to make money using journalism in new ways, and I have faith they will. Just this week, for instance, NYT, Gannett, Hearst, and Tribune created an unprecedented, heretofore unthinkable partnership to sell national advertising trhough those companies' operations.

 

Here's the question, do people think they could maintain their level of quality work when given more responsibilities, but the same amount of resources (time)? Do they think that would enable them to do better work?

 

I'm callin' bullshit again. In the history of journalism, any executive editor, at ANY company, who flipped off the company president when ordered to quit hiring would be instantaneously decapitated, even back in the good ole gravy days.

They didn't build those 30-40 percent profit margins by sheer accident.

 

If you think an Abe Rosenthal wouldn't tell a Sulzberger errand boy where to get off, you don't know the '80s in the newspaper business.

(Not saying I spoke of the Times, by the way. Point is, the news side once had power that belongs almost exclusively to the business side these days.)

 

I think Jaredk makes some very valid points. It also sounds like he has a much broader experience than many of you who disagree with him.

One other factor I've not seen mentioned but certainly has to have had an effect is the efficiencies from technology that all businesses have gained in the last 20 years.

It seems like what jared suggests is that newspapers are moving closer to the way other businesses look at their employee base.Jack Welch felt that in any given year the bottom 10 % of GE employees was under performing and should be lopped off.

JaredK may sound young but he seems a lot wiser than his years.