Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The Complacency of Hope   [Mark Steyn]

The New York Times reports on itself:

The New York Times plans to eliminate 100 newsroom jobs — about 8 percent of the total — by year’s end, offering buyouts to union and nonunion employees, and resorting to layoffs if it cannot get enough people to leave voluntarily, the paper announced on Monday.

The program mirrors one carried out in the spring of 2008, when the paper erased 100 positions in its newsroom, though other jobs were created, so the net reduction was smaller. That round of cuts included some layoffs of journalists — about 15 to 20, though The Times would not disclose the actual figure — which was the first time in memory such a layoff had happened.

Times executives said this year that they did not anticipate — but would not rule out — the news staff shrinking in 2009, except through attrition. In fact, when employees took a 5 percent pay cut for most of this year, it was meant to forestall any staff reductions. But hopes for a year-end turnaround in the newspaper business have faded.

But Bill Keller, executive editor, does his best to buck up the troops:

Like you, I yearn for the day when we can do our jobs without looking over our shoulders for economic thunderstorms.

Yes, but aside from "yearning," what are you doing? 

I don't claim to know anything about American papers except as a reader. But I worked for many years in London, which is the most competitive newspaper market in the English-speaking world. Fleet Street has a whole bunch of problems but complacency isn't one of them. Dips and downturns would occasion brainstorming, new hires, redirection, rival-nobbling by talent-poaching, and fresh content. America's monodailies are in one headlong accelerating slide and there's no sense in any of the priestly handwringing that anyone in the inner sanctum thinks, "You know, maybe the product could do with freshening up . . ." It's all about sticking to "what we do best," even as more and more Americans decide they can do without it.

The bland portentous liberalism of U.S. newspapers was a consequence of monopoly. The monopoly's gone, and so therefore has the content model. If you don't recognize that, you're not being serious. Unless you're just killing time till the federal bailout.

10/20 11:57 AMShare