The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson

May 24, 2012 will be remembered as the day the daily newspapers died in the South.

The Newhouse chain announced Thursday that the Times-Picayune in New Orleans is so broke it can only publish three days a week now, and the same holds true for the only major city papers left in Alabama, the Birmingham News, the Mobile Press-Register and the Huntsville Times.

When this change goes into effect this upcoming fall, Alabama will not have a major city daily newspaper. Louisiana will have the Baton Rouge Advocate for a little while longer, but how far can it and other papers be behind? What will happen in Nashville? Atlanta? Little Rock and Charlotte?

The move was announced Thursday in a story on all four newspaper Websites only after the New York Times broke the story.

What does this mean in the big picture?

I will have more to say about that in a Sunday column.

But the release put out by the companies deserves to be put under the microscope today, on the day the daily newspaper died.

Newhouse says this new “digitally focused media company — the Alabama Media Group, which will include the Birmingham News, the Mobile Press-Register, the Huntsville Times and al.com — will launch this fall to serve readers and advertisers across the state,” according to Cindy Martin, who will become president of the new organization.

“The change is designed to reshape how Alabama’s leading media companies deliver local news, sports and entertainment coverage in an increasingly digital age (meaning less coverage of government, politics and public affairs).

They claim in the press release the new company “will dramatically expand its news-gathering efforts around the clock, seven days a week” (but they don’t explain how they are going to do that with even less staff reporters in the field. Maybe they will just let people publish thier own version of the news in the form of press releases and forum posts, none of which will actually show up on the front page for the public to find, sort of like the new so-called “green” section they have on the environment now).

They say “enhanced” printed newspapers will still be published three days a week (obviously this is no longer a daily news”paper”). The newspapers will be home-delivered and sold in stores on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays only.

A second company, Advance Central Services Alabama, will handle production, distribution, technology, finance and human resources, and will be led by current Birmingham News President and Publisher Pam Siddall. Both companies are owned by Advance Publications, Inc. (a.k.a. the Newhouse chain).

“Driving these changes are rapid advances in how readers engage with news content across all platforms, print and digital,” Martin said. She is currently the President and CEO of al.com. (I guess by “how readers engage” means those pesky anonymous comments, mostly from paid right-wing lackies. This means more traffic so they can charge BP, ATnT and Alabama Power even more for those Web ads).

“This is obviously a dramatic change,” Martin admitted, as she tried to spin this as a good thing.

Siddall, who will be President of Advance Central Services Alabama, said the launch of the new companies is a “difficult but necessary move.”

“We have seen such dramatic growth at al.com and have such strength and familiarity with our printed newspapers, the time is now for these changes,” Siddall said. “We have to be bold when it comes to positioning ourselves for the future.”

Uh, I don’t know about you, but just aggregating more “sports” and “entertainment” (read celebrity gossip) strikes me as not exactly “bold.” A bold reporter to me is one who takes on the status quo of corporate and Republican power on the side of average, working Americans and those concerned about our government and economy actually working for the people, not against them.

The Wednesday, Friday and Sunday newspapers will be enhanced to add features and be “more robust than the papers’ current offerings,” Martin said. By “robust” she means more puzzles and comics? Yeah, that’s what we need. They are willing to pay the syndication rates for this fluff, while downsizing the news staff for covering, you guessed it, “public affairs.”

The three newspapers also plan to expand their reporting resources to provide more focus on local news, they say, but what does that mean? More local sports at the kindergarden level and PR for every Tom, Dick and Mary who might give you a click? Where is the discussion of how this will fulfill the role of covering government and public affairs, which is what gives “the press” in this country special rights under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution?

In Huntsville and Mobile, the addition of a new Sunday Forum section “will add greater depth and analysis” to news coverage (from more anonymous right-wing commenters?), Martin said, and Mobile will continue to produce a “standalone” (sic) edition of the Mississippi Press.

Finally, near the end, they admit to the coming massive layoffs.

“The change in organizational structures across all departments will lead to a reduction in the overall size of the workforce,” Martin said, but of course, “Details are still being worked out.

“There are always painful choices when you begin a process that will lead to people losing their jobs,” Martin said. “But at the same time, we must position ourselves to be sustainable businesses going forward. The new companies we launch in the fall, we believe, not only achieve that, but will serve our growing audiences and advertisers better than ever before.”

Yeah, right.

I could say “we will see.” But I know better.

These “papers” have not “serviced” the people of Alabama for many years. Much like the national press corps during the Bush years, these “papers” are an institution in this state with about as much power as any other, and they let us down time after time to serve the bottom line and the corporate chieftains who pay the bills.

It may be a sad day for all the reporters who will be laid off or forced into early retirement, and for readers who are holdouts to change. There will be much gnashing of teeth. Change does not go down well with barbecue or anything else around here. These people cling to the old ways as long as they can, like the woman who recently commented on my post about E.O. Wilson saying the creation myths of organized religion must diminish in influence for homo sapiens to evolve and thrive: “he can have my Bible when he prys it out of my cold dead hand!”

Only in this case, the paper is just not going to be there for them. What will the poor souls do?

I just witnessed some of this gnashing of teeth in person. I just broke the news at the bar in Ken’s Barbecue on Highway 79, a place written about by Alabama author Wayne Flynt in his latest memoir, and it almost started a fight. An old man was scanning over the sports page of the Birmingham News with his magnifying glass, and when I told him of the move, first he called me a liar. When I got him convinced, he started railing against the Web saying reading on the computer screen makes you go blind and other total falsehoods.

There is nothing inherently bad about the Internet, any more than there was about the printing press, the telephone, radio or television. How people use technology determines whether it is good or bad. It is change itself that people seem to hate.

I told him about the speech I made at Birmingham Southern in 2000 predicting that there would be no daily newspapers printed and tossed on anybody’s doorstep by 2019, and he said, “Oh, no. There will always be newspapers.”

Wrong. There are a number of economic as well as technological and environmental reasons why. Reasons not taken into consideration in the Newhouse accounting room, where there was probably as much fraud as the Facebook IPO, JP Morgan, Wall Street and Richard Scrushy’s HealthSouth.

We will never know, because they will never report this on themselves.

I would like to be a fly on the wall in one of those conversations when they quietly admit to themselves that building that shiny new Birmingham News building downtown was a huge mistake. Was it as big a mistake as the bankers made when they advised Larry Langford to build the new sewer system to save the Cahaba River from death by pollution?

Probably.

But all I have left to say for today is: “Long live the Web Press.” It is NOT a sad day around here. This calls for a celebration. It is vindication of what I have been saying for years when nobody listened.

Are y’all ready to start building the economy for the alternative, independent Web Press yet? Let me know when you get ready to go. We can do it better.

© 2012 – 2018, Glynn Wilson. All rights reserved.