Ugh.
The higher-ups at Lee Enterprises, the parent company of the Wisconsin State Journal, looking to improve their short term profits, laid off some of their most experienced -- aka higher-paid -- journalists.
The layoffs include columnist Doug Moe, an incredibly gifted storyteller. His column was an island of humanity in a sea of sterile AP-style copy. Andy Baggot and Dennis Semrau, two sports columnists whose attention to detail kept them vital in the age of Twitter, were also let go.
Additionally, they won’t be hiring a replacement for Dee Hall, a truly gifted investigative journalist who has already left the paper to work for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. The next time a story like the caucus scandal comes up, the State Journal probably won’t be the one breaking it.
The veteran reporters who were laid off were not pushed out because of the quality of their reporting; more likely it was because of their slightly higher wages. When the value of an employee is nothing more than a column on a spreadsheet, experience becomes a hindrance. Workforce policies built around seniority aren’t perfect -- but unions pushed for those policies for a reason.
These layoffs hurt the paper in the long run, but they may fix the books for another year. The layoffs probably ensure that Lee execs get their bonuses.
Sadly, layoffs like these are happening everywhere in the news industry, in every news market. And they affect all of us. Newspaper layoffs don’t just hurt the quality of the copy; they also affect the way journalists cover the news.
Take labor issues. I sincerely believe journalists work hard to be objective, but the instability of their job has to have at least a subconscious impact. As journalists watch their colleagues and friends get laid off in wave after wave, they are taught to devalue their own labor, thinking of themselves as interchangeable cogs with press passes. How does that knowledge sink into coverage of plant closings and attacks on tenure?
The low pay and lack of job security also prevent the field of journalism from getting more diverse. It will continue to attract young people of at least moderate affluence. It is a form of privilege to afford to work in this type of job. But if you were the first person in your family to go to college, if your family had made huge sacrifices for you to get an education, would you major in journalism?
Representing the fourth estate is a calling. But it is easier to answer that call if you aren’t the first in your family to go to college.
It’s not just a racial issue. Take a look at the reporters at our local newspapers -- a lot of them are really young. Just a few years out of college, you see beat reporters covering Social Security who can’t fathom ever collecting Social Security themselves. Older reporters take PR jobs or get laid off as a reward for their years of service. The generational gap between baby boomer newspaper subscribers and millennial reporters is only widening.
As our society becomes older and more diverse, journalists represent a smaller and smaller demographic slice of the communities they report on.
UPDATE: This article was amended to clarify that Dee Hall left the State Journal before this round of layoffs.
