A death observed
Posted inPolitics: National

A death observed

13653277_10207087732531572_2561132962302956645_o

ObserverSite

Apparently, most Americans learned about the death spiral of metropolitan newspapers and the consequences from watching John Oliver. Then they went back to kitten videos on social media. None of this is new to readers of Rogue Columnist (see here and here). My aim today is more modest.

As Oliver's well-worth-watching segment was going viral, a few of us were following the demolition of the Charlotte Observer building in downtown (or as the boosters insist ahistorically, Uptown) Charlotte. The photo above shows the work about half done a few weeks ago. The building, which took up a city block, was once as substantial on the Tryon Street side (left) as it remained on the Stonewall Street side in the top photo. Below is the site as of August 29th — all gone.

During my 30 years (!) in the working press, I have been employed by 10 newspapers across the country. I never made it to the New York Times, but I was fortunate to work at some of the finest metro papers in America, among some of the best journalists. The Knight Ridder-owned Observer was one. It was here that I was able to hit my zenith of business-section turnarounds — and the credit goes to my gifted colleagues, I only pointed the way. If I live long enough, I'll tell some of the stories. Unlike the Rocky Mountain News, the Observer is still going, in much more modest leased space (the name isn't even on the building).

But today I mostly want to meditate on the building and its meaning. This classic piece of Knight Ridder hulking architecture was no beauty. But it symbolized the importance and power of the newspaper, which not only committed great journalism but was a large employer. Before the collapse, the typical metro daily could employ 1,500 people or more in real jobs, not "gigs," in a multitude of departments from advertising and dispatch to platemaking and the press room. In the lobby, through large windows, you could watch the massive presses run. From college graduates and creative bohemians to skilled blue-collar workers and high-school dropouts — a major newspaper offered secure work and paths up.

If you had paid your dues at little papers, if you earned a reporting or editing job at a well-respected metro, you knew you had arrived and had much proving to do in order to remain — the imposing building alone told you. The building housed not only a newsroom, but a sizeable manufacturing, advertising, marketing, and distribution center. At one time, trucks from here took bundles of the Charlotte Observer to places across the Carolinas every night. It was a major civic institution — Observer Publisher Rolfe Neill was one of the four or five titans who turned Charlotte from a middling Southern big town into a major metropolis of national consequence, and who revived downtown.

53
Posted inUncategorized

Cincinnati, USA

"Cincinnati USA" is the cloying marketing term one sees around the airport. It also recognizes not only that the Cincinnati metro area stretches into northern Kentucky and southeastern Indiana, but that sprawl has taken its toll on the famous city in Ohio. This is a slow-growing metro in slow-growing states, but the city gained 0.3 percent population from 2000 to 2006, while suburban Butler County grew 8.4 percent and northern Kentucky's Boone County added 34 percent (through 2008). In 1900, Cincinnati was the 10th largest city in America and it topped out at 502,000 in 1960, dropping to around 332,000 now. In so many ways it is sui generis, but in other critical areas it is indeed the USA. Unfortunately, those areas are gloomy.

Winston Churchill called Cincinnati America's most beautiful inland city, and it's an observation that's hard to argue with even now. The city sits on wooded hills along gentle, wide bends of the storied Ohio River. The skyline pops up like a jewel box when you come down "death hill" on the freeway from the airport. Cincinnati is an architectural feast, filled with enchanting neighborhoods, lovely parks and deep history. This was the Miami country before the arrival of the whites, the richest hunting ground of the Iroquois Confederacy. Cincinnati was settled by Revolutionary War veterans, many members of the Society of the Cincinnati, and named after the self-denying Roman general who Americans likened to George Washington. Founded in 1788, it was the Queen City of the West, the gateway for generations of migrants and the haven for Germans who fled the crushing of the liberal revolutions of 1848 in Europe.

This city was so good to me when I was business editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer in the 1990s. Armed with one of the best staffs of financial writers I was ever honored to lead, we shook up the old-guard companies that weren't used to the prying eyes of journalists or transparency. Now I am using it as the setting for a new mystery series, The Cincinnati Casebooks, of which The Pain Nurse is the first. Seeing it again this month, after being away for 13 years, I was reminded of Mark Twain's witticism about wanting to be in Cincinnati when the world ends, because it's always behind the times. On the surface, the city seemed little changed. And thank God, for that slow pace has preserved so much good architecture. But beneath that veneer, the story was, as is always the case here, much more complicated.

10
Posted inUncategorized

The chickens come home to roost at Gannett

A reader asks, "how come you have not weighed in on the Gannett bloodbath that is going on with the layoffs all across the board? The Republic, as a big fish, should be pretty hard hit…I know there is no love lost there, on your part, but it is your hometown and your hometown paper and you still are friends with some of the folks there. Anyway, just curious."

I don't know many specifics, but the outcome will be bad. According to Gannett Blog, it is part of the largest mass layoff in newspaper history. The paper has been quietly cutting staff for two years, and the losses have been heavily centered on the most experienced journalists. In other words, the institutional knowledge and highest journalistic skills have been slashed. It's as if Microsoft fired its leading sources of intellectual capital. The result is predictable: a further erosion of the newspaper industry, whose journalism is a practice so vital to the health of the nation that it is enshrined in the Constitution.

I worked for the nation's largest "newspaper" company twice. Once as business editor for the Cincinnati Enquirer and then as a columnist at the Arizona Republic. In general, I was treated fairly, although this was certainly not the case with many employees. I was allowed to commit real journalism, although in both cases after a few years this was made impossible, and so I moved on. I learned a few things, chiefly that Gannett is not really a newspaper company. Yet it will be remembered as the company that destroyed newspapers.

23