Ivins Criticizes Newspaper Cuts, Says Bloggers Need More Reporting Experience

By: E&P Staff Molly Ivins criticized newspaper cost-cutting in today's installment of her syndicated column.

"(M)any of the geniuses who run our business believe they have a solution," Ivins wrote. "Our product isn't selling as well as it used to, so they think we need to cut the number of reporters, cut the space devoted to the news, and cut the amount of money used to gather the news, and this will solve the problem. For some reason, they assume people will want to buy more newspapers if they have less news in them and are less useful to people. I'm just amazed the Bush administration hasn't named the whole darn bunch of them to run FEMA yet."

Ivins, whose column is distributed by Creators Syndicate, added: "What cutting costs does, of course, is increase the profits, thus making Wall Street happy. It also kills newspapers."

The columnist noted that newspapers still have healthy profit margins. "In 2005, publicly traded U.S. newspaper publishers reported operating profit margins of 19.2%, down from 21% in 2004, according to The Wall Street Journal. That ain't chopped liver -- it's more than double the average operating profit margin of the Fortune 500. So who thinks newspapers are dying? Newspaper analysts on Wall Street. In fact, the fine folks on Wall Street just forced the sale of Knight Ridder Inc. to McClatchy Co., a chain one-third KR's size. ... So if newspapers are so ridiculously profitable, how come there's panic on Wall Street about them? Because we're losing circulation -- 2% in 2004, and down 13% from a 1985 peak, says the Newspaper Association of America."

But cost-cutting, said Ivins, won't bring those readers back.

She continued: "I have no objection to all of us shifting over to the Internet and doing the same thing there. You'd still have the two big problems, however: A) How do you know if it's true? And, B) how do you put a lot of information into a package that's useful to people?"

Are blogs the solution? Ivins doesn't think so. "Bloggers are not news-gatherers, but opinion-mongers," she wrote. "I have long argued that no one should be allowed to write opinion without spending years as a reporter -- nothing like interviewing all four eyewitnesses to an automobile accident and then trying to write an accurate account of what happened. Or, as author-journalist Curtis Wilkie puts it, 'Unless you can cover a five-car pile-up on Route 128, you shouldn't be allowed to cover a presidential campaign.'"

Returning to the subject of McClatchy-Knight Ridder, Ivins said: "Of course, McClatchy intends to merge the Washington bureaus. Guess which Washington bureau has the distinction of being the ONLY one to report skeptically on the administration's claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the war? Knight Ridder and its terrific reporters Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay. They didn't have to go to Iraq to get the story -- they found it in Washington... ."

Ivins concluded: "I've thought for years that newspapers should all be owned by nonprofits. There is a chance something like this will actually happen -- the Newspaper Guild, in alliance with the Communications Workers of America, is getting ready to bid on the 12 KR papers McClatchy has to sell. ... It is a most hopeful development."