Mourning edition
Cindy on December 18th, 2008
“Journalism is history on the run.” — Thomas Griffith
My mother once told me that printer’s ink runs in my blood. My great-great grandfather was a foreign correspondent based in Washington D.C., and according to family legend, he traveled around the world seven times. While my own freelance assignments aren’t nearly as exotic, I inherited a real passion for newsprint. Regular delivery of the Weekly Reader was, in fact, the highlight of my grade school years.
Earlier this week, I clipped an article from the Detroit Free Press and mailed it to my son — something I do fairly often because I like to share news from home. Hours later, I learned that this major daily newspaper, along with the venerable Detroit News, will be cutting home delivery to three days a week, starting in March. According to the Detroit Media Partnership, which oversees both newspapers, an “abbreviated” print edition will be available at newsstands on other days. Subscribers will be directed to the papers’ Web sites. Meanwhile, upwards of 190 jobs will be eliminated.
Likewise, the Daily Tribune, the suburban-Detroit daily that carried my Sunday column for nearly 14 years, just reduced its print version to four days from six. Though I stopped writing the Sunday column last year, I enjoy having a local byline and still contribute pieces occasionally. But at this rate, it doesn’t look as if I’ll be doing so much longer.
As if that’s not enough bad news, The Christian Science Monitor, which has published many of my reviews and essays over the past 11 years, also announced that it’s going “paperless” next April. Its daily content will be available online; subscribers will receive a weekly magazine edition. Words can’t begin to express how sad I felt when I first read about this change in the Monitor.
I’m not the only seasoned freelance writer who’s reeling from the changes in my profession. (And this isn’t just a symptom of Detroit’s long-suffering automobile industry.) Every day, journalist friends around the country report that their newspapers are cutting staff or folding entirely. Popular columns and features are getting zapped with little or no warning — though most of us have been reading the proverbial writing on the wall. We know circulation figures are dropping now that most newspapers and magazines can be read for free online. (As every journalist knows, the free-for-all Internet is both a blessing and a curse.) In response, newspaper advertising revenue is evaporating like puddles on a desert.
So the challenge for newspaper staffers and freelancers everywhere is to find ways to reinvent their careers on the Web. Can stubborn middle-aged print journalists make this transition — and earn a decent living from it? I’m not so sure. Competition is unbelievably fierce.
In the meantime, I’m feeling a bit nostalgic.
I enrolled in Michigan State University’s journalism school in the mid-1970s, when students were still pounding out deadlines on electric typewriters. For me, nothing beats the thrill of holding a real publication — a print publication — and seeing my byline atop an article or column. I prefer tangible proof of my work. Printing my online articles on copy paper — from my own computer — just isn’t the same.
A recent article in The Economist predicted that print editions of newspapers will have gone the way of the manual typewriter by 2011. If that really happens, I’ll miss kicking back with a cup of coffee and a morning edition. I’ll miss the heady scent of newsprint and the ritual of shuffling through the ads to find my favorite sections. I’ll miss mailing local news clips in letters and cards to my son.
Long before my favorite markets started drying up, I supplemented my freelance income by teaching local writing workshops. When I began teaching, I assumed (with a little arrogance) that my biggest challenge would be getting fledgling writers to tighten their paragraphs — or to find topics worthy of publication. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Every year, I meet dozens of new writers whose work is so gorgeous, so full of promise, it breaks my heart. All of them want to be published in newspapers and magazines — and quite a few dream of snaring their own newspaper or magazine columns. Less than a few months ago, I was telling these students to muster their courage and approach the editors of their local papers. That’s the best place to start, I would tell them. Build your portfolio from the ground up. That’s how I did it. Now I’m not sure what to tell them. — Cindy La Ferle
This just in: Another journalist friend shared this link to a hope-filled column on this topic in the Rocky Mountain News.
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Comments (16) 
Columns & essays, Just for writers
December 18th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Cindy, this is beautiful and poignant and hits all the bases of this truly de-civilizing turn journalism has taken. I have to believe there will be some sort of sway back to the center. First the radical push to the ‘net as if it is the cure for all ills, to be followed by a more reasoned shift.
My daughter commented that she has never seen an issue of Vogue so thin and that reading articles on the web doesn’t compare to turning pages and cutting out articles to file away for future inspiration.
I am reading Amos Oz’ autobiography. As a child he dreamt of becoming a book when he grew up. Not a writer; people could be
destroyed. But he dreamt of becoming a book, something of permanence, something indestructible.
What will the web do to those who might’ve dreamt of becoming writers? No one will dream of becoming a Kindle when they grow up.
December 18th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Newsweek is condensing too and dropping its circulation. No more hard news. Opinion pieces and features. The Des Moines Register (a newspaper that has deteriorated in recent years anyway) let a lot of staff go recently and is downsizing news wise.
Very sad but I am as guilty of living on line for my own reading and writing as anyone.
December 18th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Cindy, I appreciate your sentiments. It’s tough watching what’s happening to this industry. I agree with Debra that I think there has to be some sway back to the center. I think newspapers as we knew them growing up will never be the same. But I really don’t believe that news in print will die. I think that Heidelberg USA’s forecast has some validity. http://cindyscoffeehouse.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/the-role-of-print-media-today/
I think the stinking economy and reduced advertising has struck severe blows to news in print. So has the internet. But Heidelberg found that businesses aren’t seeing quite the return on investment that they’ve expected from the Internet.
I remember reading 20 years ago that the computer was supposed to create a paperless office of the future. And yet today our offices are still filled with 8.5 x 11 sheets.
I do think that, once the economy revives and more advertisers will be looking for vehicles in which to place those ads, we’ll see more news in print. But I speculate that the old newspaper format on those pages will be more targeted, maybe by zip code community, as my husband Ray suggested, or by communities of interest, a la newsletters.
December 18th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
New update: I just learned after publishing this post that Suburban Lifestyles, a Suburban-Detroit weekly owned by the JRC, stopped publication suddenly this morning, with a day’s notice to their writers. –Cindy La Ferle
December 18th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
This is very sad news indeed. I am also holding out hope that when the economy recovers, print will make a comeback. I love the Internet, but nothing beats the feel of paper in your hands.
December 18th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
These are very strange times, indeed. Very disruptive for us writers. And change is always hard.
I am going to hope that good things will come of it. That the medium may change but the storytelling and in depth pieces and overall quality will remain.
I mean, while I love having a printed result of my work, I’d have to say I get the most joy from the process or reporting and writing and then knowing others have read it. As long as that can still happen, all is not lost.
December 19th, 2008 at 12:27 am
So true, Cindy. The only solace one can take in sad news like this — and it’s cold comfort for anyone who’s losing a paycheck or a source of freelance income — is that the public’s need for news and features and stories is undiminishing. But the way those stories get to us is of course changing every which way, as other commenters have remarked.
I agree too that there will be a push-back to the rush to the ‘net that’s taken place over the past 15 years. And of course how that will manifest and when it’ll happen is one of the many unknowns in this strange moment in the history of journalism.
December 19th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
We talk about the internet being a community, but I also felt that in my local newspaper, when the journalists for my favorite section (the book page;-) were all names I knew who lived in the area. Now I don’t know any of the reviewers, they’re all from wire services. I feel that loss, and hope those of you who see a comeback of the print news are right.
December 19th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Good point, Cindy H! When I was a columnist, everyone in town would come up and talk to me about my role as a writer — and I really felt connected to my community because of it. I loved that, and miss it. — Cindy La Ferle
December 19th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Poignant and timely, Cindy. I have been watching as newspapers and magazines fold in the past few months and it’s saddening. I agree that there’s this connection to local community that’s missing when a daily newspaper isn’t published.
December 20th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Cindy-
I thank you for speaking to the concerns of many. It is true, times keep changing, and adjusting to those changes is not always easy. I appreciate your candor. Much to think about here.
Blessings!
December 20th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Maine papers have relied more on those syndicated columns and less on local writers. Readers complained but were told it was a cost-cutting measure. The papers lost readers and still had to cut back to save money. It’s a downward spiral. With more ads and even fewer articles, the papers continue to lose readers.
December 21st, 2008 at 9:15 am
Sharon,
That happened at our local paper, too.
It’s hard to see the logic in it. Local freelance writers are typically paid SO little that it’s hard to believe that eliminating them (in favor of wire stories) would be that much of a savings.
Many people in my community tell me they quit the local paper because there’s very little “local” in it. If newspapers are to survive at all, they will have to become local again. Really local. -CL
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:51 am
Well, I think we can blame the editorial boards for this sorry state of affairs. I was raised on the LA Times and my dad brought home the LA Herald Examiner every day after work. We were a two- paper household and this is how it was in my childhood home.
Today, the newswriting in my local northern California daily is dismal. The Sunday Opinion section is gone. HUH? How can that be? That is like leaving out the front page news.
The newspapers of today are not what they once were in terms of editorial quality and newswriting. I have gone to weekend delivery and that is only because the poor telephone salesperson practically begged me to maintain my subscription.
I feel poorly for the good writers out there who are unable to offer quality journalism to their communities. I now seek that out online as it isn’t to be found in any newspaper I can get my hands on.
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:54 am
Leslie,
I agree, re the quality issue. Most papers today are a thin shadow of their former selves.
Another thought: I feel very sorry for devoted newspaper readers in my mom’s age group (mid 70s and older). Without home delivery, my mom will let her subscription lapse. And there aren’t as many in her age group who use the Internet for much more than e-mail — if they use it at all. My mom wouldn’t know how to start a computer if she had to. If there’s no newspaper, she will have to rely on TV news, which is another story entirely. — Cindy La Ferle
January 11th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Cindy, I’m just catching up on your blog and this posting what right on. I’m so disappointed in the continually shrinking depth and breadth of our newspapers and learning that the skinny papers won’t be hitting my door every morning! It seems like I’ve had to give up a lotta things as mid-middle age hit to keep relatively healthy and avoid portliness, this is just too low a blow! Will I have to eat my high fiber content cereal in front of the computer screen instead of folding over my Free Press just so?
Yet, as angry and blue as I am…damn those Free Press reporters nailed Kwame, didn’t they? We need ‘em, can’t do without them…..gerry