Not that long ago, The Oregonian was one of the better news organizations in the country.
In 2008, Editor & Publisher named Sandy Rowe and Peter Bhatia its Editors of the Year and reported that The Oregonian had 315 full-time journalists in its newsroom the year before. The paper, two decades earlier a backwater, had picked up five Pulitzers in eight years.
Five years later, the paper’s newsroom now has 175 employees, according to its directory (UPDATE: Bhatia emails to say “the directory hasn’t been maintained well” and that the actual number was 220). That number is about to drop dramatically, with “significant layoffs” occurring this week now that the paper is the latest to get Newhouse’d. The paper hasn’t added to its Pulitzer pile since 2007.
Oregonian owner Advance Publications long bragged about the “local control” it gave its newspapers. But its new template for its newspapers is now depressingly familiar: End daily delivery; fire a third to a half of the veteran journalists, particularly the editors, particularly in news; replace some of them with young, inexperienced (and most important: cheap) labor; put them on the hamster wheel; toss around insipid buzzwords; spend a bunch of money on new offices; piss off readers; embolden competition.
It appears, Advance has learned some lessons on covering its flank from the debacle in New Orleans. When it dropped the Times-Picayune to three days a week from seven, it never suspected a publisher would be crazy enough to come in and compete with a daily edition. That’s what Baton Rouge’s David Manship did, and now, under the ownership of John Georges, The Advocate is a very serious threat to the Picayune, having snatched up not a few of its best journalists. Now Advance is having to fight back with a new tabloid edition on days the Picayune doesn’t print.
In Portland, The Oregonian will print daily, though it will only deliver three days a week, on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, with “the Saturday edition as a bonus,” whatever that means (UPDATE: Bhatia also says the paper will be delivered four days a week, despite “the three-day subscription option” referenced in the paper’s press release).
Why the paper can print a newspaper on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, but not at least offer the option of delivery is beyond me. Why not offer subscribers the option of paying more to have it delivered?
Actually, let me answer my own question: It won’t because few will want to pay up for such weak newspapers.
In Syracuse, where Advance has a similar print setup, the newsstand-only editions are so thin as to be nearly worthless, as I wrote a few weeks ago:
Take Monday’s Syracuse Post-Standard. It clocked in at 16 pages and had no original content on page one. At the top of the newshole on the left side of page one is an AP story the paper headlines “President jokes about aging and cute bangs.” On the right is an AP brief on a stabbing in Albuquerque, 2000 miles away, in which no one was killed.
Sandwiched in the middle, with dominant art and an awkward headline: a story on New York pensions that the AP put out early on Saturday. The entire paper had about 2,300 words of original content, including briefs. It had zero ads—literally none, besides classifieds and a couple of obits.
Meantime, Advance will be focusing on OregonLive.com, which… well, go look at it. It looks as bad as all the other Advance websites. Here’s what Joe Strupp wrote in that 2008 E&P piece:
The paper’s Web site, Oregonlive.com, remains under the control of Advance Publications’ Web division, criticized in some quarters for employing the same template for many of its sites. “We provide all of the content, but that is decided out of New Jersey,” Rowe says, referring to Advance’s online division. “I understand why it is done this way.” Bhatia admits it is not at the level of some newspaper sites, adding, “we are still feeling our way, and we have a long, long way to go. The challenge that we have is still huge.”
Some things at least haven’t changed.
Great article. In Cleveland, Advance Publications have destroyed a once great paper and the web site is horrible. It's a case study in how to crash and burn your newspaper business.
#1 Posted by Greg Knieriemen, CJR on Fri 21 Jun 2013 at 03:03 PM
A good analysis. Thank you. People sometimes ask me if I am glad that I "got out" of The Oregonian when I did, when I retired (a bit early) eight years ago. I don't feel that way. The Oregonian was a great career for me and included some of the best years in its history, and sometimes I wish that I had stayed on. I do feel for those who are there now and those who are being fired -- that is what it is. The trauma affects all of them and those of us who worked with them, and still read the results of their good work (if less personally). The readers, the regulars, the devoted readers, are concerned as well. The direction that Advance is going seems unlikely to produce continued good journalism. If my former colleagues can do it, they will, but what a struggle that will be with the losses being suffered. Regardless of the official pronouncements from Advance, journalism is not what Advance is about these days. I hope the other approach works for the Orange County Register.
#2 Posted by Dan Hortsch, CJR on Fri 21 Jun 2013 at 11:38 PM
Corporate notwithstanding the two bozos most directly responsible for this turn of events, N. Christian Anderson and Erik Lukens, are still standing. I'm not sure who I feel more sorry for – those journalists who were canned or those who weren't!
#3 Posted by Edward Hershey, CJR on Sat 22 Jun 2013 at 02:00 AM
Next up, the Chicago Sun-Times.
#4 Posted by A journalist, CJR on Sat 22 Jun 2013 at 06:03 AM
Mr. Hershey: Erik Lukens was hired only about a year ago. He's the editorial page editor. He is no way responsible for what is happening at The Oregonian, which is suffering the same drop in ad revenue that has been hurting newspapers across the country.
You don't like Lukens because he doesn't agree with your politics. So what? There ought to be something for everyone to disagree with in a newspaper.
As for Anderson, yes, he could have done the honorable thing and resigned. Instead, he fired employees and sent out a memo trying to cast it as "exciting plans."
In corporate America, though, the people at the top (whose poor management has helped destroy a business) are the last ones to get a lay-off notice.
#5 Posted by Pamela Fitzsimmons, CJR on Sat 22 Jun 2013 at 03:53 PM
Like Hortsch, I left The Oregonian. I got out before the bloodshed began -- before the series of succeedingly less generous buyout, before Newhouse scrapped The Pledge, before Advance froze pensions thereby screwing long term-reporters, before the layoff and before the downsizing and the latest brutal firings.
But I began smelling a rat the second I heard about Ann Arbor.
The Oregonian's downsizing is going to be analyzed to death. But my personal view is the Advance publications is so enormously wealthy that Sam Newhouse's heirs no longer have to pay attention to the foundation block of the empire, newspapers.
To the current crop of Newhouses, newspapers are just trinkets.
If staffers are shocked, well the train has been coming fir some time; they just didn't hear the whistle.
#6 Posted by John Painter Jr., CJR on Sun 23 Jun 2013 at 04:37 PM
As a subscriber to the Oregonian for almost 40 years, I agree with Dan Hortsch. He's right on that this isn't about good journalism. Ironically, the Oregonian's website is the worst media site I use for blogging - it's very user unfriendly. It's a very clunky website. If this is the future of the paper, it has no future.
This is what happens when a once locally owned newspaper is merged into a national syndicate. It's all about the bottom line as the bean counters and consultants see it, not as journalists or readers see it. The "unOregonian" as I call it now increasingly a USA Today formatted paper.
Increasingly headline stories are driven by the same mantra which has driven TV news for decades - "it's got to bleed to lead." Content is driven by the publisher's bias - in this case a neo-con biast now focusing a constant drum beat on PERS reform.
#7 Posted by Russ Dondero, CJR on Sun 23 Jun 2013 at 04:52 PM
I grew up in Portland reading the Oregonian, interned in the newsroom straight out of college, and stayed on as a temp reporter for 9 months. It was a wonderful experience and I was so sad this past week to see so many former colleagues' names on the layoffs list. Best of luck to them all in their next chapter.
#8 Posted by Katie Pesznecker, CJR on Mon 24 Jun 2013 at 03:01 PM
Thanks for this good piece on a very depressing development. I am a Portlander who is disgusted by the Oregonian's recent right-wing editorial turn, but who also values the role of local and state coverage in a daily paper. Two facets that have had virtually no discussion (either here or in the coverage of this issue in other area media) are the issue of profitability and the role of journalism in sustaining civic life and holding local institutions accountable:
1) The Oregonian's own coverage of this issue seems to state that the print edition (perhaps only on certain days?) is losing money due to falling ad revenues, but yet it also says that the paper overall IS profitable. If the company is profitable, why the draconian cuts?
2) The public and several public officials have bemoaned these changes, but virtually nobody is talking about what's really being lost here. A newspaper is not just another commodity; it is a public trust, a public good, a vital institution that is one of the few shared things that holds a city/region together. I can't keep count of the number of times that I've talked with friends and it turns out that we'd both read the same story in the Oregonian. Without this common platform, we lose both a shared civic life, and a critical check on malfeasance and corruption by both government officials and corporations. John Nichols and Bob McChesney's recent book on the crisis of journalism in the US calls for the development of a non-profit journalism model. I'd settle for modest-profit. Only the search for mega-profits creates what we're seeing with daily papers in the US.
I am desperately hoping for a repeat of the New Orleans story--if there are journos or investors committed to real journalism in Oregon, please step up and launch a competing daily paper! I know there will be many laid-off Oregonian staff excited to work with you.
#9 Posted by DJ, CJR on Mon 29 Jul 2013 at 10:29 PM