LAYOFFS AT THE DISPATCH

Amid the widespread carnage in the economy, the news of lay-offs at the Dispatch hardly causes a ripple.

http://blog.dispatch.com/blog-36/2009/03/it_wasnt_supposed_to_be_like_this.shtml

Except for those, of course, whose lives have been tied to the newspaper as a profession -- and an addiction.

The Dispatch was my first newspaper job out of the Army.  Hummingbird and I in February 1965 had dropped baby Diane off with her grandmother in Findlay and set out across the Midwest to look for work.  First stop was Columbus where we checked in at the former Christopher Inn on E. Broad St. 

By the time we checked out the next day, I had interviewed with the city editor, Gene Jordan, and been offered a beginning reporter's job at $110 a week (Jordan initially offered $90 but I held out for the big bucks!).

Thirty-seven years later, in February 2002, I checked out of the Dispatch as well.  It was a good run.  As time went on, I got better at my job and so did the Dispatch.  And despite riots and wars and recessions, I don't recall anybody ever getting laid off because of the economy.  The story around the newsroom - which I don't really know if it was true - was that even during the Great Depression, the newspaper protected its staff.

Despite the current gloom and doom clouding the future of print journalism, the Dispatch as an independent in a relatively healthy market still has a lot going for it.  These were not the newspaper's first layoffs, although they're the first impacting the editorial staff.  Ahead will be more cost-cutting, redesigns and lean years in terms of pay and benefits.  But hopefully the Big D will survive.

Everybody - including those who work there - gets off on criticizing their hometown newspaper.  But what would we do without them?  And that "we" includes the TV talking heads, the bloggers, the suburbans, the wires, all of whom depend on the print folks for actual information.

Who wants to live in a world where we save the banks, the brokers and hedge funds, but shut off our window on the world?

For a good look at what's happening with newspapers nationwide, check out this piece at the New Republic:

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a4e2aafc-cc92-4e79-90d1-db3946a6d119&k=77891

(Gray Hunter)

Comments

[Digital Gal]

A comedian said that newspapers merely need to repackage - like the iphone, how else can you carry and read the news anywhere you like - without high speed internet or Verizon...all for 50 cents. And it's interesting that so many conservatives are applauding the demise of the daily newspaper -- part of their constant desire to control the message and spin events...Granted, trends are what they are - and I understand that digital is king, but at what point will we regret the age of 140- character Twitter and the loss of the common man's analytic assessment of the day's events?

[Gray Hunter]

Twitter is the new journalism? This is not a world I want to live in, or pass on to my kids and grandkids.