Heard the news? Reporters think the time for panic is now
By: Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
March 2, 2009
A recession is like the Spanish flu — the weakest members of the population are always the first to go.
And among American industries, there were few weaker at the onset of the current panic than the news business.
It’s no wonder then that the reporters still clinging to jobs have been quick to declare catastrophe and credulous about proposals for a titanic reordering of the American economic model.
When one’s inbox is peppered with e-mails announcing colleagues’ layoffs and buyouts, reporting on a political or economic story is more than just hammering out some copy. It’s an effort for survival.
“This was the year that pretense and pride fell by the wayside and the president reported to the nation that things have skidded wildly off course,” wrote The New York Times’ Peter Baker in a piece about President Barack Obama’s address to Congress last week.
Baker, like many reporters, put Obama’s jaw-dropping proposals in the context of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Great Depression, not the malaise of the 1970s or any of the 17 other economic downturns since American independence.
Over at The Associated Press, which officially jumped the shark in June with a story headlined “Everything is seemingly spinning out of control,” Ron Fournier followed suit.
“[Obama] sounded like Roosevelt, who, after closing banks briefly in the first days of his presidency, stoked the embers of American optimism. ... Like Roosevelt, Obama asked Americans to unite against pessimism.”
While many journalists are optimistic about Obama’s strategy, those reporting on the economy and government seem pessimistic to the point of panic.
Even the most liberal economists would agree that as bad as the news has been, we haven’t reached the Second Great Depression yet. The question that divides practitioners of the dismal science is whether the actions our new president suggests would make a depression more or less likely.
Maybe there’s something in journalists’ professional DNA that encourages Depression nostalgia. After all, while almost everything else was going bust, newspapers were going great guns. In every major city, a half-dozen dailies offered multiple editions full of good reads, hard news, escapism and Dick Tracy — all for a nickel.
But there’s nothing romantic about the current downturn for reporters.
Venerable old daily newspapers are closing like carriage makers in the recession of 1918. Once-sprawling print and broadcast newsrooms are down to bureau size, and bureaus are becoming fond memories of the golden age, like travel budgets and research staff.
In the 1990s, newspaper publishers believed that 30 percent profit margins would indefinitely sustain massive debt and irrational expenditures. Chains of papers in major and minor cities grew and grew, and independent big-city dailies spared no expense to dominate their markets.
Meanwhile, local and national television news outfits were making the most of satellite and digital technology. Lavish international missions so multimillionaire anchors could have exotic backdrops for live shots were the norm. Wouldn’t CBS kill to have back Dan Rather’s budget for funny hats?
On the local scene, demi-Ron Burgundys were at the top of organizations that churned out investigative stories and chased Emmys.
But just as the dinosaurs kept getting bigger until they were wiped out, institutional news got fatter right up until the cunning little mammals of the Internet and cable news started to overrun them.
Time magazine and many others are calling for a whole new approach — charging for news on the Internet. Hearst, with two major papers teetering on the brink and deep cuts everywhere, is going to start charging for some Web content. Producers of television news hit by a loss of viewers and advertising for evening broadcasts have been hoping for years to charge for stories on demand.
It may work, but with staffs already attrited and products that struggle for relevancy, how long could the big boys keep up the blockade? Newsrooms will keep shrinking to the point that more nimble competitors will be able to offer similar content for free.
So while the pall cast over the economy at large is gloomy, journalists know that their own business has reached the end of one era and that the next one will be much more uncertain.It’s no surprise then that the president finds so many reporters who agree that failure to follow his plans “could turn a crisis into a catastrophe.” They’ve already seen what catastrophe looks like.
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