When word broke of massive layoffs at New York’s number 2 tabloid and number 3 newspaper, shock waves hit the world of journalism. The owners of the New York Daily News cut half the newsroom.
“We are fundamentally restructuring the Daily News,” an email from Tronc to the staff reads. “We are reducing today the size of the editorial team by approximately 50 percent and re-focusing much of our talent on breaking news — especially in areas of crime, civil justice and public responsibility.”
The “death” of newspapers, preceded by massive layoffs, isn’t new. It’s been going on for years, as the internet has made dailies superfluous and financially unviable. Why pay for news you already know about? Who wants to read today’s news tomorrow? Why buy a paper, no less maintain a subscription, when there’s nothing new in the news?
And most importantly for the business model of a daily newspaper, why pay to advertise on dead trees when the eyeballs are no longer there? Remember, advertising has been financing your newspaper reading for a long time. Your fifty cents didn’t cover the cost.
But there is a problem with this business model failing. It’s not, as former Daily News reporter turned New York Times pundit, Mara Gay, complains,
The loss for the city will be terrible. The News skewered local politicians, lobbyists and entrenched interests, from wayward mayors to Donald Trump. Unscrupulous developers and corrupt politicians can breathe a sigh of relief. Poor people, working people, racial minorities will lose a powerful, effective voice. The city will be less alive and less democratic, its politicians less accountable to the people they serve.
Sure, the Daily News did some great stuff. But there’s still the Times, still the Post, still the Wall Street Journal, and some alt papers. Vagaries like “less alive” and “less democratic” mean what? Does no one at the New York Times possess a red pencil?
But the Daily News filled a niche within New York newspapers. The Times was the paper for the intellectual elites, the masters of the universe who felt horrible for the poor and downtrodden as they rode downtown in their black cars. The Post was the low-brow conservative paper, slinging feces at the effete as they road past the subway entrances. But the Daily News was the working class paper. Not too flashy. No big German words to explain the psychological phenomena that drove the intelligentsia to tears over the loss of a Michelin Star or a Broadway closing.
The News did reporting. Local. Hard and, more often than not, far more real than either of its two more dominant competitors. Rather than agenda driven, reporters at the New paid their dues in shoe leather.
But they’re not folding. Yet. They say they’re going to refocus their efforts, “especially in areas of crime, civil justice and public responsibility.” Of these three areas, the only one that’s actually a “thing” is crime. The other two suggest vague clickbait-type crap, capitalizing on the current fashion in New York City. All the news that fits your feelz. Maybe the News will be the paper for hipsters. Maybe the paper for SJWs with attention spans too short for the New York Times.
The need for crime reporting on a local level, however, is what makes this cut most disturbing. When there are a dozen cruisers outside your window at 2 a.m. and yellow tape surrounding a dead body on the sidewalk, you want to know why. Well, at least I would. But then, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the why isn’t particularly important to people lately.
A video of the NYPD carrying a limp body of an 18-year-old to an RMP went quasi-viral among the passionate activists the other day, the sort of people who hang on Shaun King’s every deep insight. There was no information about who, what or why, but the activists didn’t care. It was an outrage. Who needs facts when there’s something to be outraged about?
Old-time-y reporters would be the ones to report on this type of story.
Crime reporting has a kind of mythology in the newspaper world, or at least it did for me when I started newspapering. Editors told war stories about their time working at New York tabloids in the ‘80s and ‘90s—buying drinks for cops, working the yellow tape at crime scenes, knocking on doors in “rough neighborhoods.” Smart, talented journalists talked about how showing up to blood-splattered sidewalks in the middle of the night turned them into better reporters. Okay, I thought, I’ll do that too.
Here’s a daily crime story: 300-600 words on a crime that happened. Maybe a shooting overnight that left one dead and another in critical condition (age and gender undisclosed). The reporter wasn’t there, and neither were the police and no one is in custody, so that’s the whole story. Or maybe someone was arrested, so the police might disclose the suspect’s prior criminal history, which will go in the headline. Or maybe the victim has a record, which will relegate the shooting to the category of “drug-related.” If a suspect is booked, there might be a mugshot. If they’re charged, a few days later court papers will provide a feast of details that can turn a bland blotter story into something more colorful—a portrait of a depraved criminal finally locked up. The district attorney will be happy to see it in the morning paper.
While it’s all correct, it’s not a complete description of what crime reporters did. This was the surface gloss, how it looked from the outside. What distinguished a good crime reporter was that they had contacts on the inside. They had to maintain a relationship with the cops to be able to get the leads, but also knew who was honest and who was dirty. They knew how busts were supposed to go down so they knew when the cops were lying through their teeth. They knew who to call to get the straight poop. And they knew which stories were serious enough to go to the mattresses over, burning their relationships because the lies were that bad.
Will the remaining reporters at the Daily News be the ones who know stuff, or the 24-year-old Columbia J-School grads who will write for food and, aside from being taken by their own brilliance, couldn’t find a serious source if it bit them in the butt? Screw “less alive and less democratic.” What about real?
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