The Recession & The Newsroom

Clark Hoyt, the Public Editor at the New York Times, wrote an interest an interesting article, "Recession, Revolution and a Leaner Times," about the impact the recession is having on the newsroom. Here are some highlights:

• The Times retains the largest newsroom of any American paper — 1,250 reporters, photographers, editors, columnists, graphic artists, Web producers, videographers and more — it is about to cut 100 people through voluntary buyouts and, if needed, layoffs that would happen in the weeks before Christmas.
• Other cuts: The Baltimore Sun had 400 journalists, is now down to 150 journalists. The Los Angeles Times, where a staff of more than 1,100 has been cut nearly in half.
• Rick Edmonds, a scholar at the Poynter Institute, a journalism training center in Florida, estimated last month that newspapers have reduced spending on journalism by $1.6 billion a year over the past several years.
• Bill Keller, executive editor, said he is determined to avoid closing foreign or national bureaus and does not expect significant cuts in Washington, DC.
• The Times has already reduced "the support staff, cutting freelance budgets, capping expense-account meals, seeking bargain airfares and hotels, rotating foreign correspondents every five years instead of four, and housing some bureaus in correspondents’ homes rather than downtown offices. The nice car and driver for the London bureau chief? History."
• "The metro staff, with more than 60 reporters, is still the largest, but it has been reduced by nearly 20 percent over a decade. The paper, for example, no longer has correspondents in the state capitals of New Jersey and Connecticut." Much the way the Journal announced that it would close its Boston bureau, shifting some coverage to New York.
• With an around-the-clock news cycle, reporters file throughout the day, and copy can be edited over a smoother cycle.
• Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, said the newsroom cuts and a decision about charging online readers are entirely separate issues. The cuts are “meant to address the immediate, short-term realities of our current economic situation.” Charging for online content, he said, is a strategic issue that “would have little or no impact on our financial results in the short term, but rather position us differently for long-term grow.

Very interesting insight into the newsroom.

NY Times' Ombudsman Column Focuses on Biases -- But It's Not What You Think

There's heightened sensitivity about media bias because of the presidential election, especially about the usual suspects like the New York Times, Wall St. Journal and Fox News.

The Times' Ombudsman, Clark Hoyt, wrote an article, "Keeping Their Opinions to Themselves,"
about readers' reactions to Times political coverage, making a couple of interesting points:

1. "There is an entire body of scholarship devoted to what social scientists call the 'hostile media' syndrome, the belief of people with strong feelings about an issue -- any issue that the news media are hostile to their side."
   
2. Speaking at a group in Montclair, NJ, Hoyt asked how many felt Times' coverage is biased, and more than half the hands went up. One audience member complained that the Times "always plays up scandals involving Republicans and buries scandals involving Democrats." Hoyt pointed out that the Times broke the Spitzer scandal and published extensive reports on Rep. Charles Rangel. The audience member's response: "I'd call that good journalism."
3. Journalists "do have personal biases, and a long line of studies has shown that they tend to be more socially and politically liberal than the population at large...." but Hoyt cited a study that said "a link between reporters' political beliefs and news coverage has never been convincingly established." Just ask Democrats who work for Fox News.

What's most interesting, I think, is that Hoyt acknowledges that journalists do have biases -- but it's not the kind most would consider, though it is important for PR departments to be aware of them. "Journalists are biased:

1. Toward conflict.
2. Toward bad news because it is more exciting than good news, and, obviously,
   
3. Toward what is new.

Now conflict and bad news are things most organizations want to avoid in their day-to-day operations as well as in their media coverage. The challenge is to come up with something news -- not just for the company. That's an important criteria all of us in PR need to work harder to define and achieve.