Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Media / News Bites The Washington Post Is Pulling Out of Chicago
Posted by Michael Miner on 11.24.09 at 07:43 PM
The Washington Post is closing its two-person Chicago bureau—and also its bureaus in New York City and Los Angeles.
Here, courtesy of the Washington City Paper, is the Post's staff memo vowing that "our commitment to national news of interest to our readers is undiminished, and we will maintain the level and caliber of coverage our readers expect."
That'll be a trick, with its reporters recalled to Washington. Could this mean more work for the Chicago News Cooperative, already writing stories for the New York Times?
Post media writer Howard Kurtz reports the company line but doesn't buy it. What's lost, Kurtz writes, "is the knowledge and experience of reporters who come to understand the local issues, personalities and culture of other regions by living there."
According to Kurtz, reporter/bureau manager Peter Slevin in Chicago is one of six Post correspondents being offered work back in the home office. But "three news assistants will be let go." The in-house term is "news aide." In Chicago the so-called news aide is Kari Lydersen, a frequent Reader contributor who actually works close to full-time as a Post reporter.
Comments (7)
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Mike ... Are you being facetious or charitable with the CNC reference in the WP item?
The New York Times has established its national mandate and maintains a thorough distribution network in Chicago and other major cities. It also has the kind of arts, news and political coverage that people in Chicago covet.
Apparently, the Washington Post has abdicated its role as a national voice to the NYT, Wall Street Journal and USA Today. In any case, its arts coverage is necessarily parochial, and the once-vaunted Style section is a shadow of its former self. If something really important is happening in Chicago -- politically or in the arts -- it's likely the WP editors would continue to trust their reporters to cover it.
If the New York Times is attempting to attract Chicago subscribers with its CNC inserts, what possible incentive would there be for the WP to throw good money after bad with the CNC? Chicago readers would be better served to continue reading the WP on line. But, in this business, crazier things always happen.
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Gdretska,
I don't think Mike was suggesting that the Washington Post would use the CNC in order to attract readers from Chicago. I think he was just mentioning that they might use it to cover the city, just like every newspaper uses the AP to cover each part of the world.
As far as I'm concerned, the CNC has its work cut out for it. Right now, The New York Times is attempting to market the fact that people should subscribe to them (or visit the website) because they will now be covering Chicago more with the CNC. But that isn't going to work if the CNC is going to be non-exclusive. We see (or at least I clearly do) what happened when the Associated Press decided to offer all their content to every website who wished to buy it. It made newspapers (and, in fact, newspaper websites) irrelevant for people wanting national and international news. Nobody else had anything close to the huge resources of the AP and couldn't seriously compete with them. But they throw this advantage away. If the reporting of the CNC is available in other places besides the New York Times than it really isn't going to work for the newspaper to try to use them to get Chicago readers. And if the only revenue source for the CNC is the Times then I don't see how it could ever make money. So I just don't see how the CNC can be a success. It really boggles my mind why Dan Mihalopoulos left what I assume is the most coveted reporting job at the Tribune in order to work for something that has a serious chance of going under in less than a year. To take such a huge gamble, I assume he would have to have had some animosity towards his bosses at the Tribune. Perhaps someone has some inside knowledge of this that they'd like to share. But I think very shortly he may end up severly regretting that he made a decision that was based on emotion rather than logic. He probably threw his entire career away.
seems reasonable to assume the NYT has an exclusive lock on any CNC content produced specifically for them - 30 days, 60 days, life, whatever - but not an exclusive on all CNC generated content ... while the NYT could have asked for such a provision when they cut the deal (& the CNC was certainly in no position to argue), doesn't seem likely CNC can't supply other original content to whomever else cares to pay for it....so, yes, as i think mike is asking, the CNC might very well get some WP biz down the road, especially if the CNC gets into spot news.
IAC asks some good questions about why Mihalopoulos left the Tribune for the CNC. Same questions could apply to David Greising, though Greising has said that he sees a possibly brighter future with CNC.
Still, beleaguered, diminished and degraded as it is, the Tribune has much the better business model. As distasteful as it must be for any thinking journalist to work there--exquisitely attuned as the paper is these days to "frenzied families," "carefree couples" and "chipper chipmunks"--that's where the money is. And good work can still find a way occasionally into the crevices between the new Trib's massive clip art. One also knows that Mihalopoulos and Greising are not dummies. So it's reasonable to think that their personal frustrations or animosity toward the bosses figured into their decisions.
As for the Washington Post, Brauchli's statement that the Post's commitment to national reporting remains "undiminished" says nothing, of course, about the Post's ability in that regard, which is pretty much in the crapper. Why can't these management monkeys just tell the plain truth? We can't afford it anymore. Sorry. We now have other priorities. Sorry. No one who matters in Washington or along the entire Eastern Seaboard really gives a hoot about Chicago or Los Angeles and it's pointless to keep up the pretense. Sorry.
If the Post needed spot news items from Chicago, it could pay prevailing freelance rates to laid-off reporters -- peanuts -- all over town who could handle the task more efficiently and just as well as the freelancers being commissioned by the CNC (e.g., the Art Institute piece). I imagine it would be difficult to commission more work from Mihalopoulos or Greising, whose mandate probably is to beat the dailies at their own game. Then, too, any freelance agreement also might require availability of copy for clients of Post's wire ... something that CNC wouldn't buy, but a non-affiliated freelancer might.
The spot-news game is expensive, especially if the WP were to commission the CNC to commission freelance pieces. Why not skip the middleman and develop a stable of savvy freelancers? It would also make sense to commission highly qualified Reader reporters -- past and present -- to supply WP and other papers with spot news, especially in the arts. But, of course, the Reader's new publisher and editorial board member would likely forbid such an alliance. Conflict of interest ... anyone?
Going with freelancers would definitely be an option for the Post. But anyone at a paper who has ever dealt with them knows how spotty the quality can be. And even if you're lucky enough to latch onto a great one--they're definitely out there--the institutional structure at a paper just never puts a priority on getting their stuff into print. On the other hand, maintaining a bureau with a full-time staff amounts to an urgent, standing mandate.
In short, from newspaper management's standpoint (on the news side; feature departments differ), freelancers are people whose stuff you use only when you bloody well have to; bureau staffers are people whose stuff you use because you bloody well have to--or risk losing the bureau. It ain't right, it ain't fair and it doesn't necessarily serve readers very well, but that's basically how it works.
