Sunday, December 03, 2006
OWNERSHIP: Newsday staffers ready protest letter to Tribune Co. management
ORIGINAL URL:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003467099
Published: December 02, 2006 11:55 AM ET
'Newsday' Staffers Writing Protest Letter To Trib Chairman Dennis
FitzSimons
By Joe Strupp
Editor & Publisher Magazine
NEW YORK -- Several dozen Newsday employees are planning to send a protest
letter to Tribune Company Chairman Dennis FitzSimons that blasts the
corporate parent for what they see as "throttling Newsday's individuality"
through bureau staff cuts, and seeking instead to "inflate the corporate
profit margin."
A draft of the letter, a copy of which was obtained by E&P, states in
part, "In its pursuit of maximum profits, Tribune has cut Newsday's news
staff by 33 percent and slashed our Washington bureau. Amid wars and
crises abroad, it has ordered our foreign bureaus closed. It has halved
our staffs covering national news, and health and science. It has forced
us to curtail coverage even of New York City and Long Island and has made
other cuts that fail our readers."
The letter, which is still being edited by staffers, later notes, "Our
reduced staff is spread too thin; we're missing stories we should have
gotten. Too often, when we see news important to our readers, we are told
there is no space for it." (The entire text of the draft letter is
included below.)
Dozens of Newsday employees met Thursday at the paper to discuss how best
to protest what they see as "Newsday's dismal decline" and deterioration
at the hands of staff and budget cuts in recent years. The letter,
expected to be sent in the coming weeks, was one of the major subjects of
the meeting.
James Rupert, who is currently reporting from Islamabad for the daily,
drafted the initial version of the letter to FitzSimons, which a group of
Newsday staffers is continuing to edit and plans to send to the
Chicago-based ownership once it is passed among newsroom workers for
signatures.
"We're polishing it," Rupert said by phone from the Pakistan city where he
is reporting. "We are discussing the letter. We had a meeting to polish
this in a way that we are sure it gets newsroom consensus."
The letter would be the latest attack on Tribune, which has come under
scrutiny for recent battles over staff cuts at the Los Angeles Times and
efforts to sell all or part of its many media holdings. Newsday workers
appear to be miffed that cutbacks in recent years, which have included a
2004 buyout, have hurt the paper's credibility and journalistic efforts.
"We find the recent evolution unacceptable," Rupert said. "We think it
needs to changed."
Rupert said as many as 55 staffers attended the informal Thursday
gathering, calling it "a good first meeting for something like this" and
"a significant chunk" of the paper's personnel. The final letter is
expected to be sent out before the end of the year, Rupert said. "It will
be a little different to express everyone's concerns."
The veteran reporter, who worked at The Washington Post before joining
Newsday in 2000, said many of the staffers' concerns are prompted by what
they hear from readers. "People on Long Island have noticed a change in
Newsday," he said. "The paper is thinner and duller. They need to hear
from the journalists that we share that regret."
***
DRAFT LETTER FROM NEWSDAY'S NEWSROOM TO TRIBUNE CO. ===
Dear Mr. FitzSimons:
In the newsroom and bureaus of Newsday, we watch with growing dismay the
Tribune Company's stewardship of our newspaper. In its six years of
ownership, Tribune has significantly damaged Newsday as an instrument of
public information and accountability in Long Island and New York City.
In its pursuit of maximum profits, Tribune has cut Newsday's news staff by
33 percent and slashed our Washington bureau. Amid wars and crises abroad,
it has ordered our foreign bureaus closed. It has halved our staffs
covering national news, and health and science. It has forced us to
curtail coverage even of New York City and Long Island and has made other
cuts that fail our readers.
Our reduced staff is spread too thin; we're missing stories we should have
gotten. Too often, when we see news important to our readers, we are told
there is no space for it.
Tribune is throttling Newsday's individuality by forcing us to replace
much of our own journalism with wire copy, by dictating the layout of our
website and insisting that we promote our local news coverage at the
expense of all else. Newsday doesn't need Tribune to tell us to cover Long
Island - local news has always been this paper's core. But we deplore the
parochial idea that readers are interested only in what happens within
their zip codes. New Yorkers understand all too well that events in
Hamburg, Beijing or Beirut affect us at home.
When permitted, we still do plenty of work that we're proud of - as local
as uncovering the waste of public funds in Long Island firehouses, and as
global as reporting from Cuba, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Washington on
innocent men imprisoned at Guantanamo.
We know that rising competition from Internet firms makes this a tough
time for newspapers. And we know that Newsday worsened its situation with
the shameful, illegal and costly inflation of our circulation figures.
But we also know that Tribune's constant cutting of resources to inflate
the corporate profit margin and shore up the stock price is a failure.
Newsday is a profitable business, even more than most newspapers. Our
paper has grown handsomely since Alicia Patterson founded it in a garage
66 years ago. But we didn't do that by cutting corners to guarantee a
profit every 90 days. We did it by building a newspaper so complete that
Long Islanders didn't need another one. Newsday invested in the reporters,
editors and many others needed to explain complex issues, investigate
corruption and dig out whatever news affects our readers. That same
investment in creative, original journalism is what will serve our readers
and make our company thrive in the Internet era.
If Tribune wants to successfully own large newspapers, it must show more
respect for their individualities and communities. It must reduce its
demand for short-term profit and commit to building, rather than cutting,
newspapers for the future. And it should do so quickly or sell Newsday to
an owner who will.
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Joe Strupp (jstrupp@editorandpublisher.com) is a senior editor at E&P.
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