I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

YES, ABSOLUTELY, newspapers are commercial enterprises. Their owners, whether closely held private groups or shareholders of large media corporations, rightly expect a return on their investment. And when times are tough, cuts must be made, and often that means letting good people go, just as it does with companies that manufacture widgets. What makes newspaper layoffs tough for readers, I think, is that the writers and editors who are nudged not so gently out the door have built a common voice, one that speaks to us daily, and we know that we will miss them when they're gone. Reading Dan Rubin's agonizing description of yesterday's sadness inside the Inquirer's newsroom, I was struck by all the familiar names whose hard work will no longer appear in the paper I read most often: Solid reporters such as Kellie Patrick and Natalie Pompilio, Benjamin Lowe and Jeff Shields, Dawn Fallik and Julie Shaw, folks I dealt with when I was in PR and whose stuff I've read and enjoyed for years.

In my own earlier days as a reporter, I sat in a union hall and talked to guys -- one of them a high  school classmate -- who had just been laid off and were trying to figure out what the hell to do next. I know it's the way of the world, and the fact that Rubin's colleagues are media people, professionals with distinct public identities and tones, lends a disproportionate weight to their situations. But newspapers, commercial enterprises that they are, are nevertheless different than the widget makers. They are a public trust, and stripping them of talented people makes it that much harder for them to fulfill their mission of watchdogging and safeguarding. The challenge for the Inquirer -- one that it has historically been incapable of meeting -- is to do more with less, to refocus its more limited resources on the stories that truly matter. Looking at the names that are leaving, though, I can't help but think that the paper's fat could have been trimmed much better elsewhere.

Comments

[Tom Goodman]

Rubin's piece was a moving elegy to a way of life that is not only changing but eventually will barely resemble what we experience today, namely, holding a paper in our hands.

[Tom G]

Bringing it back to sports, slightly, how was David Aldridge let go, but Screamin' A was retained?

[Tom Durso]

TGood: I'm not ready to go that far, but the times, they are a'changing.

Tom G.: I had exactly the same thought. have to think that it was simply seniority -- Aldridge has been with the paper for fewer years than Smith.

[Jeff Martin]

I have no problem with Aldridge getting cut, but it's time to let Smith shuffle loose the written coil. I get more than I want of him already in other venues.

[Chris Durso]

It's always sad when people -- especially good, talented people -- lose their jobs. But this is the way the world works, and these are the latest drops in a bloodletting that goes back at least to the early '90s, when I was a suburban correspondent for the Inquirer. The staff writers were constantly fearful of budget cuts, and constantly nostalgic for the Pulitzer-rich Gene Roberts years. There were buyouts and layoffs, plans new and then abandoned to cover the suburbs, and, always, concerns about the shrinking news hole. Nothing unique, given the industry, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that I got the "Whither Lopez?"-style outrage out of my system something like 10 years ago. Today, I read the Inquirer and it seems desiccated. There's just not a lot to it, and it's everyone's fault: Management/ownership for squeezing cash from an already-profitable endeavor, and labor for clinging, with bitter entitlement, to old models and old visions. Philadelphia is not a first-tier, international city. Instead, it's something more interesting -- a truly great regional city. It would be nice to see an Inquirer that reflects that reality and doesn't think it has to apologize for it.

P.S. T, which former classmate did you interview about losing his job way back when?

[Tom Durso]

Very interesting comments, Chris. I've thought for a while that a good paper for the Inky to emulate was the Boston Globe, which seems to have a far better idea of what it wants to be and how it wants to get there. As a corollary, Boston has always seemed far more comfortable in its own skin than Philadelphia, for the civic reasons you cite.

I'll e-mail you with the classmate I interviewed; no reason to drag his name through a layoff that's more than 10 years old.