There is no doubt that there are a lot of changes happening in the newspaper business – or perhaps I should say in the business of newspapers. For years now, we have been watching newspapers all around the country experience a decline in readership. What is the cause of this? Some, especially readers of this website, would like to say that it is exclusively due to the left-wing dogma of most newspaper editorial pages, along with the left-of-center bias that appears to come from most newspaper news rooms (see the most recent example of that here).
The reality is that while some people have stopped subscribing to newspapers for ideological reasons, the most likely suspect for the precipitous drop in readership is due primary to the way that people choose to get their news (I guess there could also be less people interested in getting the news, but I don’t have any data to support that). More and more people are using the internet – via their computers and cell phones – to get their information. I know from talking to some friends in the newspaper business that this was first felt by papers with a major drop in interest in paid classified advertisements. Between eBay, Craig’s List and other sites, that part of the newspaper business has been hurting for a while. Add to it the huge drop in print advertising revenue with shrinking readership, and the high overhead involved with running newspapers, and it’s no wonder that a venerable publication like the Rocky Mountain News (the 9th largest paper nationally by circulation), which had been in business for nearly 150 years, a couple of weeks ago shut its doors. Just yesterday there was a story about McClatchy Newspapers (which is the parent organization for the Sacramento Bee) announcing more layoffs and employees taking pay cuts.
I actually am bringing up this topic because of one unfortunate effect of this economic malaise in the newspaper business – which is a reduction in the number of reporters that are providing in-depth coverage of California state policy and politics. Most specifically, as the State Capitol bureaus of newspapers from up and down California shrink, there is an important “government watchdog” function of the media that is suffering.
This was highlighted to me because of a recent piece of solid investigative journalism by the Los Angeles Times – the kind of investigative reports that we used to see more frequently…
In this case, Michael Rothfield with the Times looked into the travel habits, at taxpayer expense, of senior officials in the administration of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. This kind of work, by the way, is not sexy and exciting. It involves requesting lots of public documents, comparing varied documents looking for suspicious activity, and then trying to seek more information, often from officials who are very not-interested in “assisting” the process. In his piece, California Paid For Top Officials’ Free Rides ran on Sunday, March 1st and detailed a number of seemingly egregious expenditures of tax dollars with officials “commuting” to and from Sacramento from other parts of the state, and other travel on the public dime that looked to be for personal business.
As a direct result of this investigative piece, it became public that one of Schwarzenegger’s top appointees, Rosario Marin, the Secretary of the State and Consumer Services Agency (pictured), was actually paid large sums of money for speaking engagements – from companies that are regulated by state government. The Times carried that news here. Not too long after that, Governor Schwarzenegger, doing a bit of “spin 101” responded to the growing controversy in this matter by issuing new directives to his senior staff, requiring stringent public reporting and gift limitations. Of course, there is no telling what other “fallout” will occur because of the fine investigate work done by Rothfield on this story.
But one thing is pretty clear – the number of reporters, like Rothfield, who are out there conducting serious investigations into what takes place in state government is rapidly shrinking. Whether it is the departure of some of the most talented investigative reporters, or that the remaining ones are no longer given the kind of latitude to take weeks or months to look into these things without having to publish other stories in the meantime, as they have to deliver more frequent and less in-depth content to make up for colleague layoffs.
Let me conclude this commentary by making it clear that when newspapers show bias in their reporting, it makes me upset. And when the left-wing editorial pages of major dailies call for bigger and bigger government – it makes me roll my eyes. But I also know that the investigative piece I have highlighted above represents some good that comes from newspapers – and something that will be sorely missed as more and more newspapers go belly up. Could the San Francisco Chronicle be the next major national paper to close its doors?
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