The following article by Elizabeth Keyser, appeared in the July 7, 2009 edition of Fairfield Weekly, which can be found at: http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/article.cfm?aid=13734. It is reprinted here with permission, courtesy of the Fairfield Weekly.

Pressed to the Bone

Fairfield County’s less local, more consolidated, resource-starved newspapers

Tuesday, July 07, 2009 Fairfield Weekly

By Elizabeth Keyser

Your local paper is getting less local. Pick up your city’s daily and you’ll find news about cities and towns on the opposite end of Fairfield County. Want to bring photos and a press release to your town weekly? They might have moved to a neighboring city or town — if the paper still has a local office. (Fairfield County Weekly no longer has an office in Fairfield County.)

To say it’s been a rough year for the local press is an understatement. Fewer ads, thinner papers; staff cuts; salary reductions; shutting down of newspapers; consolidated ownership, operations and coverage; bankruptcy filings. Three community papers have gone under — the Bethel Beacon, Stratford Bard and Brookfield Journal — all owned by Journal Register Company, which is in bankruptcy proceedings.

In a wealthy market that generated a slew of local (and award-winning) papers devoted to their communities, publishers’ responses to falling profits is more regional news — news from outside the paper’s circulation base — and fewer reporters (and even fewer experienced reporters with in-depth knowledge of the community).

Fairfield County has three categories of papers: daily newspapers covering breaking news; weekly community newspapers focusing on town government and giving big play to school sports teams; and the alternate weekly, carrying opinionated coverage of politics and arts.

The biggest news in the last year was that four dailies — the Stamford Advocate, Greenwich Time, Connecticut Post and Danbury News-Times — came under the ownership and management of one of the biggest media companies in the country, Hearst Corporation, which also scooped up the Brooks Community Newspaper group of local weekly and bi-weekly papers.

All of these papers began life as family-owned publications, dating back to the 19th century. From the late 1970s onward, all were bought up by major media companies. By 2000, three big media companies owned them. The Tribune Company (which owns the Fairfield County Weekly) owned the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time. Media News owned the Connecticut Post. Dow Jones & Co. owned Danbury News-Times. Now there’s one owner.

“Ten years ago there would have been a hue and cry about media consolidation,” says professor James Simon, director of the journalism program at Fairfield University. “But given the state of the economy, I’m all for it if it makes papers stronger.

“The price to be paid,” he adds, is that three of the dailies are in the same congressional district. “Before you would have had [three] different views. We’ve lost something — giving readers different views.”

Whether Hearst is improving the papers is a matter of debate to readers and journalists. The corporation, which carries a large debt load, eliminated 44 local jobs in April and, according to published reports, plans to cut another 80.

But the cuts and consolidations could keep the papers alive, despite how painful they are to journalists who have found themselves unemployed, or, if still working, pulling double- or triple-duty.

“As someone who just saw a 147-year-old paper cease, I’m extremely sensitive to [staff cuts],” says David McCumber, editor of the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time since April 27. He was previously the managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Hearst shut down that paper’s print edition earlier this year and left a skeleton staff to operate an online version. “We are in a huge crisis,” McCumber says, “and [staff cuts and consolidations] are a chance to get papers on an expense footing that allows us to continue.”

The survival of newspapers is important, says Simon, a former AP reporter. “My PhD dissertation discussed where people got their information in presidential campaigns. People who relied on newspapers were more likely to vote than those who got their information from TV or radio.”

Of course, the newspaper industry isn’t the only one in trouble. “Some people like to focus on the woes of the newspaper industry, but it’s just one of many trying to navigate an uncertain economic landscape,” says Will Rowlands, former editor of a local weekly and vice president of the New England Press Association.

Dailies

Simon says despite the dailies being “shockingly thinner — he “picked up a paper the other day and thought they’d left out a section” — they’re keeping up the quality.

“It’s a pleasant surprise,” he says, “They seem to be doing it with smoke and mirrors.”

At the dailies, Hearst has consolidated entertainment, weekend and business sections, increased shared regional content and added more bells and whistles online.

“We’ve launched new blogging platforms, more database polls, videos,” says Tom Baden, editor of the Connecticut Post. They certainly have. Beneath and between flashing ads, blogs, slideshows, videos and interactive polls, the eye can hardly land upon the links to news stories.

But increased regional news stories are not pleasing some readers. Dale Salm, managing editor of Connecticut Magazine and a reader of many local and regional papers, says, “[Readers] have written letters to the editor to the effect that if they wanted to subscribe to the Connecticut Post, they would. They do not appreciate ‘shared editorial’ and feel cheated.”

The June 10 Stamford Advocate, for instance, ran seven news stories about Stamford, and 14 regional (Fairfield County), two state and seven national/international stories.

The June 9 issue of the Connecticut Post ran three stories about Bridgeport, two about Milford, one about Stratford and one about Fairfield — towns the paper covers. It also ran one story each from Greenwich, Ridgefield and Danbury, picked up from sister Hearst papers.

Critics, such as Salm and former and current journalists from local papers who asked that their names not be used, doubt readers of the Connecticut Post care about Greenwich, Ridgefield or Danbury.

McCumber says the papers share content only where they see “there’s some interest across the market. We play it differently.”

The loss of veteran reporters concerns industry watchers. Salm notes most of the “skilled editors and writers … have been handed their walking papers after years of devoted service. Almost all the people writing for the [Advocate] today were not there a year ago, and frankly have neither the history with the publication and its audience nor the skill to do justice to what was the area’s top daily.”

The Stamford Advocate now has only one experienced city reporter. Seven new, young reporters have been hired in the last year and a half. Many do not live in Fairfield County.

McCumber, however, says the paper still has “excellent reporters and editors who have been with the paper for quite a while,” such as managing editor John Breunig. He says the staff is “age-diversified,” having an “ideal mix of youth and energy and institutional memory.”

Hearst eliminated layout and copy desks at three of the dailies. A universal copy desk in Bridgeport handles the four papers — which might be why the Stamford Advocate recently misprinted the mayor’s name as “Daniel” Malloy instead of Dannel.

Salm says, “The grammatical errors, spelling errors and typos are legion, an indication there is minimal if any proofreading before copy is finalized.”

Printing staff and operations were also consolidated. The four dailies are also printed at the headquarters of the Connecticut Post in Bridgeport.

Coverage of Norwalk, Fairfield County’s third-largest city, with a population of 84,000, has suffered. Hearst eliminated the Advocate‘s Norwalk edition, started as a self-standing paper in 2003. Five Norwalk reporters have been reduced to one who covers the “cops and courts” beat. The paper picks up stories from the weekly Norwalk Citizen-News, a BCN paper Hearst now owns. The Citizen-News has one reporter.

Weeklies

At the weeklies, Hearst increased paper size of the Brooks Community Newspapers from tabloid to broadsheet, a move some saw as trying to take on Hersam-Acorn, a locally-owned community newspaper group that was founded in 1997 and publishes 19 weeklies in Farfield, New Haven and Westchester counties.

“I don’t know that Hearst went from tabloid to broadsheet to compete with us,” says Thomas Nash, Hersam-Acorn’s group publisher, “but it was a good move. You get bigger display for advertising and content, bigger pictures and headlines.”

Hersam-Acorn, meanwhile, cut their staff in January, and in September instituted across-the-board salary reductions. Publisher Martin Hersam would not give specifics, but says, “It was not insignificant. We’re all feeling it.” They’ve kept their “key” editorial staff intact, he says.

Hearst consolidated BCN offices, which traditionally were located in towns they covered, moving the Darien News staff to New Canaan with the New Canaan News staff, and the Westport News staff to Fairfield where they share space with writers and editors from the Fairfield Citizen.

They eliminated two top editor positions. The bi-weekly Fairfield Citizen and Westport News are now headed by one editor (whose title was changed to “editorial coordinator”). The editor also handles work once done by an arts and entertainment editor. Both papers used to have their own managing editor and now they share one.

Reporting staffs were cut in half in 2007 when BCN was owned by Media News Group. Weeklies have one reporter; bi-weeklies have two. They can’t cover all the town government and board of education meetings they used to.

“Weeklies have traditionally been the best way to get local news, but I’m worried about the impact of continued staff reductions,” says Rowlands. “Editors may have little choice but to run more press releases, more and larger pictures and stories from other newspapers to fill the void. Instead of being able to follow several story lines, they may be forced to cherry pick. When that happens, the depth and breadth of local news coverage will suffer.”

The New Canaan News June 11 online edition posted 12 stories. Six were local (five written by the staff reporter, one a press release given a misleading “New Canaan News Staff” byline). The other six would be familiar to readers of Hearst’s Stamford Advocate.

Fairfield Citizen‘s June 10 print edition ran all local stories, seven bylined and eight press releases.

As Rowlands recounts, “‘More with less’ is a nice-sounding motto, but at most weeklies, the fat was excised years ago.”

Overburdened editors don’t have time to edit. They publish stories with sentences like, “Illegal dumping was cited as a problem in the study despite signs warning of against action…” and police reports written in copspeak rather than plain English: “Police responded to a parking lot … on a report of an intoxicated individual walking around.”

What’s Missing

Gail Wall, chairperson of the Norwalk Democratic Town Committee, reads the Stamford Advocate, Norwalk Citizen-News and The Hour, an independently-owned newspaper covering Norwalk, Westport, Wilton and Weston. She says something’s been missing for a long time.

“Investigative journalism is really lacking, and it has been for the 15 years I’ve lived here,” Wall says. “You get community events, you get coverage of the Common Council. You get sports. You get fluff. But we are facing extraordinary economic times. Our citizens need to know more about state and municipal government. We need to know how government spending affects the average taxpayer.”

McCumber hopes to address this. He also directs news operations for Hearst’s Connecticut Newspaper Group and coordinates investigative journalism for Hearst’s newspapers across the nation. He says he would like to set up a small investigative unit at Hearst’s Connecticut newspapers.

“Investigative journalism is close to my heart,” he says, “I think it’s part of the solution of newspapers. It’s one of the things newspapers are able to do better than any other medium. It’s part of our public trust. It’s a big part of what the public looks to us for. We have the skills and experience to go deep on stories.”

In Connecticut, he would like to to have five reporters devoting at least part of their time to investigation.

While many people see news moving increasingly online, McCumber is positive about the future of print in Fairfield County.

“These are great print markets. These are towns with very strong identities and engaged populations intensely interested in their communities. All the elements are in place. I see no reason why we can’t be successful in both print and the Web.”

[Correction:  Stamford Advocate Managing Editor John Breunig's name was originally printed as John Bernick.  We apologize for the error.]