Los Angeles Times story on "the California newspaper that has no reporters left"

The California newspaper that has no reporters left

 

Paywalled. But I"ll just say nothing Gannett does surprises me any more ... or any less.

 

Damn good line.

 

I read this story last night. As per Gannett's typical MO, the Salinas paper sustained cutbacks, reporters began leaving, rinse-repeat, a few hung on trying their best, and so on and so on. Finally, the last one left for a TV gig. They have no one there, no local news, have some stories from other sister papers. Sunday circ fell from 11,000 to about 2,500.

Of course, the locals are now up in arms about not having anyone watching what's going on with the city-county-issues, covering the sports teams, doing the good stories and so forth.

The story's not new, but it's new for Salinas and I guess the LAT needed something to write about. Probably if Steinbeck hadn't been associated with it they wouldn't have cared.

 

Don't sell Salinas too short, though. Population around 163K in last census, county seat, business center of county and ag center (last three letters of KSBW, the local NBC and ABC affiliate, stand for Salad Bowl of the World). But for Gannett just to let it go to hell like this is remarkable.

 

I've read that the St. Cloud, Mn., paper is in the same condition as Salinas. The last reporter left at the end of January. Final St. Cloud Times reporter leaves newspaper | kare11.com

 

I really hope Gannett isn't getting any money from legal notices.

 

Spent some time there recently; by far the largest employer in town is the massive plant that makes the bagged salads you get under a hundred different brand names at your grocery store.

 

GannettHouse is not in the newspaper business. It's in the newspaper killing business. Remember, this is GateHouse in Gannett polos on casual Fridays. They suck newspapers dry and then claim a tax writeoff. That is their MO.

 

There were two points when I knew newspapers were going away 1) when our publisher highlighted an study in E&P that said newspaper quality does not have an impact in determininng whether someone subscribes or doesn't - they were either newspaper readers, or they weren't - and when I saw a Gannett "mission statement" that said the point of the company was to deliver profits to our shareholders, or somesuch. We weren't a newspaper company, just a company that used newspapers as a means to an end. Which is pretty much what 90 percent of newspaper companies are these days.

 

Reid was at a conference where he said many of Gannett's smallest papers were not profitable. If Gannett has stopped staffing the paper locally I don't think the company is making much money in Salinas. I wonder why they don't sell the paper to BANG or another chain in the area. that chain could at least plug in more regional news.

 

The point that I knew newspapers were going to have a rough road was somewhere around 2004-2005, when the executive editor of the Gannett paper I worked at was touting some new initiative about how we were going to do more things with the website, including regularly putting our stories on there when we were done at night.

She was asked if we were going to start charging to access our stories on the website and she said we weren’t because there wasn’t technology available to make anyone pay and besides, there were “studies” that showed people didn’t want to pay for website-generated news.

Then she was asked why anyone would subscribe to the paper if they could just get the same stories online for free and she just shrugged her shoulders.