UPDATE: Steve Smith, Editor of 'Spokesman-Review,' Explains Why He Quit After Layoffs

By: The Associated Press and E&P Staff Steven A. Smith, editor of The Spokesman-Review, resigned Wednesday as the newspaper announced a new round of job reductions and a reduced format.

Smith's resignation is effective on Friday, and a successor was not named. He has led the newsroom since 2002. [See below for Smith's next-day explanation.]

Publisher W. Stacey Cowles said in a news release that the newspaper had suffered the same economic woes that have beset the rest of the industry in recent years. As a result, the paper planned to cut an additional 60 jobs, including 25 in the newsroom.

That will leave a total of 470 workers at the newspaper by next year, Cowles said.

Cowles also said the newspaper will adopt a more compact format next June. The new page will be the same length as the current page, but will be about 12 inches wide, instead of 13.

"Our goal remains that of being among the best daily newspapers of our size anywhere in America and, most importantly, of being the preferred source of information in the Inland Northwest," Cowles said.

"It was not a layoff that I personally could support or sustain, and so I am resigning," Smith told the newsroom, according to a reporter's blog. "If it's any consolation, it saves a couple of positions, which saves a few reporters, but that really isn't the point. The point is it's time."

He said his resignation should not overshadow the layoffs.

"Those journalists losing their jobs are among the newspaper's best and brightest. I hired most of them," Smith said in the news release.

"I have been honored to serve as editor of this wonderful newspaper for more than six years," Smith added. "I leave behind the finest group of journalists with which I've ever been associated."

Managing Editor Gary Graham will head the newsroom during the search for Smith's successor. He expressed disappointment over the reduction of news staff, the second in the past 12 months.

"We will, however, still have the largest newsgathering force in the region and still be able to cover the critical issues our readers expect us to cover," he said.

The newspaper will retain its correspondents in Olympia and Boise and its bureau in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, he said.

E&P UPDATE: On Thursday, Smith talked with of Knight Digital media Center's Michele McLellan.

It is all at: http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/leadership_blog/comments/an_editor_resigns/

Here is an excerpt.
*

Smith told me today that after six years as editor, 36 years in journalism, and the last year relentlessly trying to develop revenue streams that would save newsroom jobs, it was time for him to go.

Two reasons:
1. Smith no longer he could sustain journalism that met his standards of quality in a newsroom wracked by deep cuts and uncertainty about the future.
?The journalism that?s important to me is no longer possible,? he said.

2. By resigning, Smith says, ?I regain my voice.? Smith said he has not felt free to speak out about the journalistic decline that comes from cuts in an industry environment that promises more with less. ?I simply wasn?t willing to stand up and tell people things would be better or even OK. And our publisher needs someone who can do that.?

?It is time to stop standing behind our salaries, our bonuses and our pensions and stand up and say what needs to be said??that short-term thinking and cutbacks are ?dooming our organizations to irrelevance and causing irreparable harm to our systems and society without consideration of the larger loss,? Smith said.

For Smith, resignation punctuates this thought: ?It is no longer my job or our job to save newspapers. Our job is to save journalism and the values that underlie newspaper journalism,? such as the free flow of information and aggressive coverage of government.