Newspapers are in decline

The Los Angeles Times won five Pulitzer prizes in 2004, but didn't increase its readership or revenue. Now its parent company is slashing costs, and the editor has quit. Village reports on the newspaper's decline, and how it bodes ill for the media in the US – and, eventually, here.  By Conor Brady.

These are deeply unhappy days at The Los Angeles Times, one of the great American newspapers and one of the oldest. It was first published in 1884. Since then it has been a respected institution, part of the fabric of public life on the west coast of America, with a reputation and an influence right across the country.

What has been happening at the Times is being seen by many US newspaper people as a microcosm of their troubled industry. Coming in the wake of scandals at other figurehead newspapers – notably The New York Times – it has reinforced the image of American journalism as dubious and unreliable and of US media corporations as exploitative and predatory.

The troubles at The Los Angeles Times have been bubbling for some time. But they took a distinctly nasty turn with the resignation in July of editor John S Carroll who had held the chair for the past five years – more or less since the paper came into the ownership of the Tribune Company of Chicago. In 2000, Tribune paid more than $8 billion to acquire the Times-Mirror Company from its majority shareholders, the Chandler family.

It was one of the biggest and one of the most strategically-significant takeovers in US media history. In addition to The Los Angeles Times, the Tribune acquisition included the prestigious Hartford Courant, The Baltimore Sun and Newsday. It also included more than 20 TV stations, a number of television production companies and a football team.

The marriage between Chicago-based proprietors and Los Angeles-based newspaper people may not have been propitious from the beginning. Former Times-Mirror president, David Levanthal questioned whether it was right that the people with the power to determine the fate of a Los Angeles newspaper should live in Chicago. But others – including many journalists – were initially buoyed up by what was seen as a welcome vote of confidence by Tribune in an industry that is generally regarded as being in decline.

In Chicago, the acquisition of the big Los Angeles newspaper was seen as something of a coup. The Tribune's flagship publication, The Chicago Tribune, has arguably been a better newspaper in journalistic terms. But it had neither the reach nor the market scale of the Times.

Many at the Times also welcomed the takeover by what they regarded as a corporation with solid, old-style newspaper values. Morale in the Los Angeles newsroom had been badly dented by the revelation in 1999 that the then CEO of Times-Mirror, Mark Willes, and the publisher, Kathryn Downing, had set up a joint venture with a local sports and entertainment centre. The newspaper then published a special supplement dedicated to the centre and 50 per cent of the advertising revenues were diverted to the centre itself – rather than to the newspaper.

There were unprecedented public apologies, with much wearing of sackcloth and ashes. But many staffers felt themselves deeply hurt and angered and believed that long-term damage had been inflicted.

Initially, under John S Carroll's editorship and in the proprietorship of the Tribune, it seemed that a new golden age had dawned for the Times. Carroll built up the newspaper's overseas bureaux, strengthened its Washington and Wall Street coverage and reinvigorated its stable of columnists and feature-writers. It was generally agreed that the Times had become more authoritative, more heavyweight. The Pulitzer-count went up – five in 2004 alone. The Los Angeles Times was now being spoken of in the same breath as the prestigious east coast newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post.

But within a relatively short time it became clear that the Tribune had not come as a white knight to Los Angeles. The Chicago-based accountants had a vision for the Times-Mirror group that had little to do with editorial excellence and all to do with cost-reduction, shedding jobs and services and driving up the bottom-line profits. Moreover, Carroll's enhancement of the newspaper's status and reputation had not translated proportionately into increased readership or advertising revenue. From the Chicago perspective, the bottom line was not good enough. The answer: hack down the costs.

The relationship between Carroll and his corporate bosses deteriorated steadily. The public dialogue became frosty. Times editors and staffers were baffled and angered by the stony silence from the Chicago boardroom when the five Pulitzers were awarded in 2004. Meanwhile, Carroll and his senior deputies wrestled with Chicago's accountants in an effort to maintain a workable compromise between editorial services and cost-reduction targets.

Finally, in July, Carroll decided to throw in the towel. He is 63 and retirement could not be too far ahead in any event. His stand-down was muted. He had little to say publicly beyond an acknowledgment that there were a "number of factors" behind his decision.

The story of The Los Angeles Times has been replicated or is being replicated in many newsrooms across the US. As newspapers come into the ownership of larger, corporate conglomerations, the pressures to meet "normal" profit thresholds increase. Editors and journalists tend to believe that the way to achieve this is to develop and improve the "product". The business managers tend to take the opposite view. They see waste and inefficiency in traditional editorial methodologies and they want them shut down. Perhaps more worryingly in the long run, they see little scope for growth in newspapers. They are "sunset industries" that have had their glory-days. They are being overtaken by broadcast media and by internet-based services. Investment is pointless. Short to medium term profitability has to be maintained by achieving "efficiencies".

Remarkably, on this side of the Atlantic – and in Ireland in particular – there is a more upbeat view. People still want to invest in print. Businesses want to own newspapers and people who own newspapers already are scanning the market to buy additional titles. But ultimately what happens in America tends to happen here too. Nobody should be sanguine.

Conor Brady is Editor Emeritus of The Irish Times. He is a senior teaching fellow at the UCD Graduate Business School where he lectures in modern media