Losing Capital

By: JOE STRUPP As Washington braces for one of its biggest news years ever, with a new commander-in-chief being sworn in amidst a severe financial crisis, two wars and a mounting list of other social and ecological problems, the pool of newspaper reporters covering the federal government is shrinking dramatically.

Although several newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, are slightly bolstering their White House staffs, the number of journalists in town to keep watch on Congress, federal agencies, and government malfeasance is plunging.

The number will fall even further in a few months when Cox's D.C. bureau closes its doors. With eight national reporters, the bureau has long served the newspaper chain's 17 dailies, including the Austin American-Statesman, the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News and The Atlanta Journal- Constitution, focusing on giving the papers the localized, issue-driven news they want. Andy Alexander, who joined the bureau in 1976 and has served as bureau chief since 1997, estimates some 4,500 of the bureau's stories were used on average each year by the Cox string of dailies. That localized content "has sort of been the stock in trade of our bureau," he notes.

But that will end in April, when the Cox D.C. bureau shuts down. Alexander, 60, has already committed to a new gig as the Washington Post's next ombudsman. And while the Dayton and Atlanta papers will maintain a combined three-person presence in Washington, the remaining Cox bureau staff ? including two scribes in New York and California, as well as five foreign reporters ? will be dismissed. "It is a terrible loss, it is still painful," he adds.

Following the shutdown several years ago of the Block Newspapers bureau, which served The Blade of Toledo and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, this past year saw the closing of Newhouse News Service, Copley News Service (and The San Diego Union-Tribune bureau) and several one-person D.C outposts such as those at The Deseret News in Salt Lake City and the Daily News in Los Angeles, in addition to Cox.

Meanwhile, several major Washington bureaus have seen cutbacks or reorganizations since late 2007, including Media General, McClatchy, Hearst, Scripps, and Gannett. "Washington news is in the ascendency at a time when Washington coverage is being cut," says Charles Lewis, Hearst's bureau chief. "It is difficult to reconcile those two trends."

Among the most dramatic changes is at Tribune Co., which essentially dropped the dividers between its papers with D.C. bureaus, including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. After the departure of Tribune Bureau Chief Michael Tackett last summer for Bloomberg, and Times D.C. boss Doyle McManus' switch to Op-Ed columnist, the company opted to combine all its D.C. staffers into one shared operation.

After cuts that saw 10 out of 29 L.A. Times Washington journos axed along with six of 15 Chicago Tribune staffers, the company promoted broadcast-side executive Cissy Baker to the post of bureau chief, with oversight of the entire operation. While many smaller Tribune papers, such as The Hartford (Conn.) Courant and Baltimore Sun, remained with the same Washington crew, the merger of the two staffs was a jolt.

"It is really going gangbusters," contends Baker, the daughter of former Tennessee senator Howard Baker. "Better than I could have anticipated." But not all connected with the change agree: "It is a travesty," says one current staffer who requested anonymity.

Elsewhere, the changes in D.C. coverage have sparked a mix of reorganization in those who supply newspapers with national news. The Associated Press, which last year dumped 10-year D.C. bureau chief Sandy Johnson, has made a significant move toward regionalized coverage to help fill some of the losses, while newcomers like Politico and old hand CNN see an opening for their content in newspapers.

"There are other options popping up all over the place," says Jim Vandehei, executive editor of Politico ? which last year launched Politico Network, a service that provides content to newspapers. "We have so much information that editors find it appealing. I think we are in the middle of a big transformation."

But in the end, what will that transformation mean? Will it be a dearth of coverage in which smaller newspapers lose out, or an opportunity for other news sources, some still to be created, to bring in more scrutiny and individualized reporting?

Local, local, lacking?

Most of the Washington press corps, at least those of newspapers, do not hail from the likes of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. In many cases, they are reporters and editors who feed either one or two small dailies or, more often, a string of newspapers in various parts of the country. These regional reporters usually avoid the big White House story of the day or congressional party battle in favor of local congressional delegations and regional issues of interest to their newspapers.

When cuts come to their D.C. outposts, it's those localized stories that suffer, editors say. "There are many, many Americans who don't have that kind of coverage of the local congressman, their senators, the regulatory agencies impacting their part of the country," says John Walcott, longtime chief of McClatchy's Washington bureau. He lost five people in the past year through attrition ? including former top editor David Westphal, who was not replaced. "It is tragic that the number of newspaper reporters who are here in Washington to keep tabs on the federal government is decreasing at a time when the country is still enmeshed in two wars, and facing a financial and environmental crisis."

Laura Rehrmann, managing editor of Gannett News Service's Washington bureau, has three fewer staffers than she did a year ago. With five editors and 19 reporters, coverage must be localized for nearly all 85 Gannett papers.

"We are not covering all of Congress, we are covering what the Indiana delegation is doing, and Ohio and Arizona and so on," she says. "We have been shrinking over the years, and we expect more [of that] before the end of the year." Her bureau also houses reporters for Gannett's Des Moines Register, Detroit Free Press, and The Courier-Journal in Louisville, but they work for their own newspapers.

"The media is kind of carving up what is happening in Washington," Rehrmann says. "I don't have a reporter covering the Pentagon. USA Today, AP, the New York Times and Washington Post have reporters at the Pentagon. But are any of them covering the local congressman who is not showing up to vote?"

That approach has sparked some bureaus to eschew the national beats for local emphasis. Media General's six-person Washington bureau, which covers the capital for The Tampa Tribune and Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, among others, reorganized on a regional basis last winter, while cutting one position. "We have a geographic beat structure now, it is more of an issue approach," says Marsha Mercer, bureau chief since 2003. "We thought that was a better way to serve our markets. We recreated the bureau as though we hadn't had one before."

Part of the impact on Cox is its plan to sell 10 of its 17 dailies, including the Austin American-Statesman and nine others in Texas, Colorado and North Carolina. For Cox newspaper editors, like John Bartosek of The Palm Beach (Fla.) Post, the reduction is a second hit for him after he lost his lone Washington reporter months ago to a buyout. "We have not had our own person there for some months and the Washington bureau had continued to help us out, provide specific coverage for things we were interested in," he says. "Any lessening is not good."



'Aggregation' city

At the Scripps Media Center, which handles Washington coverage for the E.W. Scripps chain and the Scripps Howard News Service both in print and broadcast, staffing has dropped from 40 people in 1999 to just 16 today, according to Peter Copeland, the bureau's general manager and editor.

"Most of the decline in people [happened through] not filling positions as people left," Copeland says. In 1999, he adds, "we had 10 national reporters, now we have three. We used to cover Congress every day and the White House every day. Now we don't."

The bureau staffs four regional reporters who write for seven Scripps newspapers, along with three investigative reporters. The scribes also provide stories for the 400 clients of the Scripps Howard News Service, but largely on a national basis. Adds Copeland, "Our reporters are routinely on Page One, because our stories are in demand."

At Hearst, which has just three staffers in its Washington bureau, much of the work is drawing coverage from other Hearst outlets for its news service. "I have one reporter and one columnist who cover everything that has to be covered," says Charles Lewis, who has been bureau chief since 1989 ? when it had 19 staffers. "We are more of an aggregator at this point." The Hearst bureau also moved into cheaper quarters in recent years, now leasing space from McClatchy in its D.C. home.

But the impact is also being felt at several Hearst papers that staff their own reporters in Lewis' bureau. The San Francisco Chronicle has gone from four people to two since 2007, the Houston Chronicle slimmed down from five to three, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer cut its lone D.C. person last year. Lewis adds, "It is bad, and it is ironic that it is at a time when there is an intense interest in Washington news."



From big prize to buyouts

The poster child for Washington bureau losses may well be Copley News Service, which handled the Copley chain of papers including the San Diego Union-Tribune. The bureau had 11 staffers in 2006 when it won a Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering the bribery scandal of Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a San Diego-area lawmaker. Marcus Stern and Jerry Kammer were cited by the Pulitzer board.

"There isn't any way you can overstate the importance of having someone in Washington covering news of the priorities, the people and the issues of the community," says George Condon, Copley's bureau chief since 1984. "For 64 years, this bureau watched the issues for the San Diego community, whether it was the Navy, border issues, off-shore oil drilling or immigration. You aren't going to get that anywhere else."

Just two years after the Pulitzer victory, the Copley bureau found itself reduced to four staffers earlier this year, and then dropped to three when veteran Finley Lewis announced his retirement last summer. The remaining three put in for buyouts when they were offered, and all were accepted.

"That effectively closed the bureau," said Condon in early December, as he packed boxes in the bureau's 11th-floor office at the National Press Building. He said one of the reasons he and his colleagues sought to leave was the pending sale of the Union-Tribune and several other Copley papers to an as-yet-unknown buyer. "Had there not been an imminent change of ownership, I don't think any of us would have taken it. I certainly wouldn't have." At 60, Condon is closer to retirement age than some, but says he would have liked to have stayed on.

Union-Tribune Editor Karin Winner admits she will miss having people in Washington who can uncover stories like the Cunningham investigations. But she contends the paper, like others, can make do. "It is a loss, no doubt," says Winner, who notes she has lost 30% of her newsroom staff in the past 18 months through buyouts and layoffs. "It is hard, but it is part of doing business with fewer people. We have a politics writer who will pick up what we need, and our beat reporters have picked up some things."

But Winner agrees that without a D.C. bureau, stories like the Pulitzer winner are harder to find. "It was the Washington bureau that found it," she adds. "Marc Stern found it as he pored through documents. That started it."

Condon notes other localized stories his bureau discovered over the years that AP or other wire services might not have, including two California congress members caught up in the House banking scandal; an earmarks investigation involving local Congressman Jerry Lewis; and even a visit years ago by President George H.W. Bush to Colombia and its impact on the cut-flower business of San Diego. "That is not something you are going to get from the wires," he says.

Then there's Tribune Co., which made its first move toward D.C. consolidation in 2006 when it moved all of its Washington bureaus into one building, the former Woodward and Lothrop Department Store. Now the approach has shifted to consolidated, converged reporting. No longer will reporters from different papers cover the same events, vows Washington news bureau Vice President Cissy Baker: "We've combined all of our newspaper people into one bureau. It's one pot now."

Baker has also pushed for more mixing of newspaper staffers with Tribune broadcast outlets and Web sites: "We usually get a top to a news story on top of a Web site within hours. As a result of bringing people together, we have been able to streamline coverage. There has been no duplication of stories. The bureau looks more like what a bureau should have been in Washington 10 years ago ? combined strategy and one entity."

She says the bureau still has several people at the White House and on Capitol Hill, but the remaining staffers are used more strategically. Baker contends that local stories remain important, adding, "If there is something with the Illinois delegation, we can investigate and feed it to the Chicago Tribune, or with the Maryland delegation for the Baltimore Sun."



Possible alternatives

But is help on the way from other non-newspaper sources to fill some of the void? the Associated Press, which has been battling with some newspapers that object to its new rate structure for 2009 and overall service to newspapers, recently reorganized its D.C. coverage to provide more regional reporting.

Michael Oreskes, AP's managing editor for U.S. news, declines to provide specific staffing numbers for the D.C. outlet. But he says a new plan includes reorganizing 12 Washington-based reporters already on regional duty into four groups of three scribes each, which will be focused on different areas of the country. "We are not necessarily expanding the numbers, but we are moving a number of them around," he says. "We want to be plugged in, in an effective way, that coincides with a lot of Washington bureaus being reduced or closing."

A former New York Times Washington bureau chief, Oreskes adds, "There will be stories that don't get covered" in our nation's capital. "Part of the reason we are focused on this regional team is to fill the gaps to the extent we can."

Two other offerings are the new CNN Wire service, which is targeting newspapers, and Politico.com, the Washington-based Web site and local thrice weekly that has already signed up dozens of newspapers for its news network.

"We certainly offer newspapers another option for covering Washington," says Jim Vandehei, Politico's executive editor and a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal writer. "We will have a dozen people in the White House. We break a lot of news, and provide what I think is smart analysis."

According to Vandehei, Politico has 65 news staffers and 95 total employees. It showcased its abilities during the political conventions in St. Paul and Denver, where it provided content for the Denver Post and St. Paul Pioneer Press. Vandehei claims Politico is "one of the few and maybe the only one investing in top-flight talent." As of late 2008, Politico Network had signed up 67 daily papers to use its content online in exchange for sharing ad revenue. Among those: all 27 Advance Publications dailies, including The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., and The Oregonian in Portland.

In mid-December, Politico also announced that it would be providing some Reuters content to Politico Network clients.

Both Reuters and Bloomberg also have become more sought-after for filling in, while other D.C. content is possible from the likes of ProPublica, the non-profit investigative news outlet that has three of its 28 journalists stationed in and near D.C., and The Huffington Post, which is expanding its investigative elements. "I think everything will change," says founder and Editor in Chief Arianna Huffington, referring to the nature of D.C. coverage on the Web. "We will not be all about politics, but also business, media, and entertainment in Washington."

Paul Steiger, the editor-in-chief and CEO of ProPublica, says he has looked into utilizing existing bureau space in Washington. "We are trying to fill some of the gap created for investigative reporting," says Steiger, a one-time Los Angeles Times D.C. journalist. "Washington jobs have been plum jobs and so some of the most talented journalists have gotten them ? when you are cutting them, you are cutting some of the most talented people."