What Hearst should do

The Advocate and Greenwich Time reported this morning that Editor David Warner has resigned after about four months at the helm.

I have no insight to offer about Mr. Warner, whom I’ve not met. Like most editors, he probably brought some good ideas to the papers, which we’ll hear less about now that he’s gone.

But clearly, some serious miscalculations were made under his leadership. Exhibit one would be the tabloid-style headlines in The Advocate. Big mistake. When the point size of your jellyfish-alert headline approaches the size of the ones published on Sept. 11 and 12, 2001, you’re in trouble. Content also suffered. The local flavor of both newspapers dwindled as staff was cut and cut and editors were stretched thin.

In this market, you can’t replace solid local content and grassroots community news with overwrought generic fluff. Readers notice. And readers don’t like.

What works in Philly or the Quad Cities or, yes, even my beloved hometown of Detroit, doesn’t work here. Times-Mirror Corp., Tribune Co., Media News — all three claimed to have learned that lesson in Stamford and Greenwich when they owned our local papers. Yet all three turned around and made the same mistake. When will they learn? Let’s hope Hearst Newspapers, which assumed operations of The Advocate and Greenwich Time after Media News practically ran them into the ground, will finally get it right.

I left the newspapers nearly a year ago, after more than 20 years at The Advocate and Greenwich Time — editing, writing, reporting and supporting. It’s been an interesting year for me personally. But I’ve kept in touch with a number of my colleagues at the newspapers over these last months, and something I heard on CNBC the other day about the crisis on Wall Street seems very applicable to our local newspapers.

A commentator observed that two decades-worth of change has occurred in the financial markets over the period of two weeks. That’s how the changes at The Advocate and Greenwich Time have felt to me. They might not have happened over two weeks, but the last year has been a watershed. There have been a lot of changes. Most have not been for the better. And it’s tough to know when the newspaper industry as a whole will recover. Further advertising declines are forecast for 2009 on top of an already dismal 2008.

Yet this local reader has cause for mild optimism. New bylines are showing up in The Advocate and Greenwich Time, though both newsrooms remain understaffed in key areas. The daily drumbeat of tabloid headlines has been silenced in The Advocate, for which most readers are grateful.

Hearst will take another positive step if it hires the next newsroom editor from within The Advocate/Greenwich Time family. There are a few talented, experienced people who have worked at both newspapers, understand Greenwich and Stamford, and would bring the passion and commitment readers and the newsrooms deserve. I have no idea who is interested in the job, so I won’t name names. But Hearst ought to do everything it can to be persuasive — and to hire from within.