The shrinking Washington News bureaus

NY Times:

A new president arrived from a new party. The balance of power shifted in Congress. Legions of fresh new faces showed up in the nation’s capital with new ideas, eager to upend the way the country does business.

The year was 2000, and Cox Newspapers had about 30 people in Washington to cover the new Bush administration.

Eight years later, a similar transformation is under way, the stakes heightened by two foreign wars and the worst economic collapse in decades, but Cox will not be there to cover it. Cox, the publisher of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Austin American-Statesman and 15 other papers, announced this month that its Washington bureau would simply close its doors on April 1.

Cox is not alone. Another major chain, Advance Publications, owner of The Star-Ledger of Newark, The Plain Dealer of Cleveland and other papers, just closed a Washington bureau that had more than 20 people.

Like a number of smaller papers, The San Diego Union-Tribune recently shuttered its bureau, which had four people at the end. Three years ago, the parent company, Copley Press, had an 11-person bureau in Washington, but it has since sold most of its papers.

Those that remain have cut back drastically on Washington coverage, eliminating hundreds of journalists’ jobs at a time when the federal government — and journalistic oversight of it — matters more than ever. Television and radio operations in Washington are shrinking, too, although not as sharply.

The times may be news-rich, but newspapers are cash-poor, facing their direst financial straits since the Depression. Racing to cut costs as they lose revenue, most have decided that their future lies in local news, not national or international events. That has put a bull’s-eye on expensive Washington bureaus.

Albert R. Hunt, Washington executive editor at Bloomberg News, said he was taken aback by the mood Saturday night at a dinner of the Washington press corps’ Gridiron Club. “It was like being at a wake,” he said. “Every time you turned around, someone was talking about their bureau being closed or downsized.”

A few years ago, after much debate, the club began to admit magazine and television reporters. Now, without them, “there couldn’t be a Gridiron Club,” Mr. Hunt said. “You couldn’t get enough newspaper people.”

The Tribune Company, which filed for bankruptcy protection last week, recently merged the once-formidable bureaus of The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and other papers. The combined bureau has about 32 people, compared with the more than 70 the papers had there a year ago.

“I think the cop is leaving the beat here, and I think it’s a terrible loss for citizens,” said Andy Alexander, the Cox bureau chief, who is retiring. “But I can’t argue with the business decision that Cox has made, at a time when papers can’t even find the resources to cover the local zoning board.”

...

I think they missed the obvious reason beyond money. I am sitting in Washington, Texas, which has no news bureau anywhere reading about Washington from the NY Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. The chances that some of those other bureaus could write something interesting that I have not already seen is remote. If they do, it will be linked by Drudge or one of the majors will jump in and cover it too.

The chances that the NY Times will cover something in Brenham 20 miles down the road is also remote, but the Banner-Press will cover it in some fashion.

I hope the print media can survive, but it may take a purchase by Google to keep some of the content available. That is apparently where much of the ad dollars have also gone. It is not clear to me why the broadsheets are having so much trouble moving their ad base to their internet product. Local advertisers still need someone to direct readers even if they have their own sites.

Politico seems to have found its niche and appears to be profitable. It is also in a position to offer content to local papers that can fill the gap lost by closing a bureau. There are also opportunities with the new administration where writers can be paid for what the media companies used to pay them to do--support Obama.

This may not be the change that the media that supported Obama had in mind, but it is coming anyway.