On Sunday, Sept. 30, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans’ largest newspaper, published its final issue as a daily. While The Times-Picayune lives on in print three days per week, what was once one of America’s great dailies is now a mere shell of its former self.

Of course, a similar thing is happening to our own daily newspaper. The Arizona Daily Star is still published on dead-tree every day—and I think that will continue for a while, thankfully—but it’s not the publication it used to be, and the future is not looking all that rosy.

At the Arizona Newspaper Association’s awards banquet a couple of weeks ago, I found the representation of the Star to be telling: Teri Hayt, the managing editor, was one of the few representatives of the Star who was present, and many of the awards she walked up to accept were for scribes like Rob O’Dell and Josh Brodesky.

O’Dell and Brodesky—at one point, arguably the Star‘s two highest-profile writers outside of the sports section—have left in recent months for The Arizona Republic. And Hayt is on her way out, too, heading off to Ohio to work for another newspaper group.

So, in other words, a soon-to-depart editor was picking up awards by reporters who had already left.

I’ve sat in the Tucson Weekly editor’s seat for almost a decade now, and I’ve noted that as the years pass, more and more people are clamoring for our attention, in part because other big media sources around town have died (R.I.P., Tucson Citizen) or have been substantially weakened (hello, Star). But we can only do so much.

Days are dark in the daily-journalism world circa 2012. And I fear it’s going to keep getting darker.

This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2012.

10 replies on “Editor’s Note”

  2. Jimmy,

    Most conversations about the future of news have an element of despair — the litany of debt and layoffs and closings. And the villain? The Internet.

    I think it’s time to reframe a debate that’s gone on for too long. I’m weary of the bleak attitude about the future of news; we need to change the discussion to one of hope and confidence about the quality local journalism that’s being done today.

    Some bemoan the decline of newspapers – and it’s a sad thing, to be sure, to watch community institutions dying due to bureaucratic interia and crushing piles of debt – but I believe there’s more good reporting being done today than any time before.

    Local Independent Online News Publishers are successfully creating the future of reporting: locally owned and operated news outlets that directly serve their communities.

    Most of that work is online, and much of it’s being done by the members of the LION Publishers community.

    Our ethos of “local” isn’t new – it’s a return to our roots. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, local news was reported by family-owned newspapers, radio and TV stations rather than national chains more concerned about quarterly earnings and stock prices than reporting on communities.

    It’s to support the traditional values of journalism in a new age – the values of speedy, accurate, comprehensive and caring reporting sustained by healthy businesses practices – that a group of local publishers from around the nation founded the Local Independent Online News Publishers association.

    Hundreds of local news websites across the country – from neighborhood hyperlocals to small town forums to metro and regional sites – are reporting the news, in many cases more efficiently and effectively than the legacy media they’re replacing.

    From thebatavian.com in New York to Berkeleyside.com in California, from the Twin Cities Daily Planet to TucsonSentinel.com, local independent news is a growing part of the industry.

    Indeed, the future is black for chain media with billion-dollar debts and execs who were too busy toting up $37 million retirement packages to pivot their industry.

    And sadly, it may be murky for the many great reporters and editors (and designers, pressmen, saleswomen and circulation managers) who work for those legacy operations.

    But for enterprising reporters and their readers? The future is far from black. Change has ever been a constant in the news biz. From Linotypes to InDesign, hot lead to photo plates, and now the Internet in its many permutations — quality reporting not only weathers the storm, it can be the better for it.

  4. The Star also managed to make a mess of their web site. It used to be possible to quickly scan what was there, but now they’ve really made a mess of the navigation. And yes, we are subscribers to the paper version, but I often prefer to look at it before it’s actually delivered. Oh, and the “subscriber only” content — why not make it available online to print subscribers?

  5. @nunaurbiz: I thought the 9/21/2012 Star’s feature on the astonishing growth of Sonora’s economy was excellent. Could be that I’ve felt a new energy in Hermosillo and have also visited the renovated Guaymas port, which will become the busiest on the West Coast in a very short time.

    Good things are happening there, including the fact that I know quite a few young people who are studying in excellent tech schools and universities and who don’t have the slightest interest in emigrating to the States. Which is quite a change, because most of the ones I know have family where it was tradition to cross the border (often illegally) to seek work here.

    The feature was beautifully written and well-researched and presented a real challenge: that Tucson should get on the ball to benefit from an economy that is growing at a rate almost 3 times as ours.

    That’s only one example, (there are others) but it is one that illustrates what a good newspaper can do. It would be a huge loss to see the Star fold – especially to its choir of constantly grousing critics who’d have to find a new target. (Like The Tucson Weekly, perhaps?)

  6. @riorican: Yeah, but can the Star tell me what’s happening in my world? No, they don’t. Not on any consistent basis. Yeah, you can pick a story out here and there, but enough to get me to read every day? NOPE.

    I must say, Mr. Smith and the Tucson Sentinel do a much better job at keeping a finger on the pulse of Tucson. He can do more with a fraction of the staff and money that the Star does. Many of the reporters at the Star are on remote control with editors apparently reading copy the same way and not caring whether they get the whole story or not.

    You can cite a few examples of good reporting? I can point you to the Star website every day for multiple examples of bad reporting.

  7. @nunaurbiz: Thank you for your earnest “rebuttal” to my post.

    But I would have much preferred reading that you found the fine article the Star published about Sonora’s astonishing growth kind of scary.

    Who knows?

    Sometime in the near future, we may be seeing a reverse “illegal” emigration into the thriving state of Sonora, Mexico from the – most definitely not – thriving state of Arizona.

  8. @riorican: I’m not disputing you found an article you thought was good. Whether I found it was good is beside the point 🙂

  9. The fact that the Republic hired O’Dell and Brodesky should tell you something about the state of that rag. O’Dell is poseur who would not have been able to write anything about the city without his county connection feeding him stories. Brodesky is a clown who couldn’t report his way out of a public latrine. His articles attempted to mix humor with news but were so one sided and ill informed that they were laughable only because they weren’t in a high school paper. Also, did you know the City enacted a new zoning and development code on Tuesday? You wouldn’t if the Star was your source of news because it wasn’t reported. This new code is the result of years of work and thousands of hours of staff and public time. Its a pretty big deal. Its a direct result of all the complaining the development community has done over the years about how difficult the old code was to navigate and was essentially anti-development. Now, when someone can’t get a permit its an above the fold story in the Star (or the subject of a Danehy piece) but when the City tries to address the concern…..crickets. At least the TW is out and proud about its bias. The Star still pretends to be a local daily. Its a joke.

  10. I dumped my Star subscription 8 years ago, after their editorial page went to hell. Like most news outlets they have adopted a milk toast “lets not piss anybody off” editorial posture. To their credit they still have Fitz. I scan their iPad App daily, but their emphasis seems to be on local sports. For 20 years I subscribed to both the New York Times and the Arizona Daily Star. The fact of the matter is the NYT’s does a better job of covering many major Arizona Issues than the Star or the Arizona Republic does. Their has been much better coverage on how global warming has affected Arizona and immigration issues over the past 10 years in the NYT, you get from either Arizona’s papers. They at lease have two writers on the ground in Arizona. Any article about anything in the NYT’s that runs 2,000 words, ends up being 400 words by the time it get printed in the Star. Newspaper revenues peaked in 2002 and heading downhill in the 30 degree nosedive ever since. Newspapers have to be 60% ads to pay for the news print and as ad revenue has tanked, so have the column inches devoted to news.

    I take no joy in these assessments, but the $32 bucks a month I give the NYT’s for a M-F print subscription and full digital access I look at as my little contribution to keep real Journalism alive. Much like my PBS donation.

    The NYT is not perfect newspaper (remember the lead up the the Iraq) but it has 500 reporters world wide and is the major new gathering organization in the world and one of the few place left where long forum Journalism lives.

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