ColumbusMediaInsider

Click cut is glimpse of Dispatch future

By John K. Hartman

It is just a TV magazine. Why do we care?

   Most people get their TV listings from the on-screen program directories provided by cable and satellite providers and streaming services. Years ago weekly TV magazines in newspapers were profitable items, chocked full of advertisements adjacent to the listings and widely used by viewers at home. Now the weekly TV magazines are thin because they contain only listings, not advertisements, and are little used.

   The Columbus Dispatch calls its magazine Click and until recently inserted the magazine in its Sunday paper. In his column on Sunday July 26, editor Alan D. Miller announced that Click would no longer be inserted in the Sunday paper, but would be moved to the Saturday paper, effective Aug. 1.

New owners shielded

   He went to great lengths to deflect blame for the change from the new owners of the Dispatch, GateHouse Media, and said the change had been in the works for a long time and that it was due to demands on press capacity to produce the voluminous (my word) Sunday paper. If so, I wonder why wasn’t the change made months or years ago instead of seven weeks after the new cost-cutting owners took over?

   Editor Miller failed to mention in his column of July 26 that the circulation and readership of the Saturday paper is roughly half of the Sunday paper. Only printing 125,000 copies of the 24-page 7 by 10.5 inch Click each week on Saturday will save GateHouse Media lots of dough in newsprint and ink compared to putting it in 250,000 copies on Sunday.

   It sounds like cost-cutting the owners would endorse, Sunday-only subscribers desire for a TV magazine notwithstanding.

Good soldier  promoted

   A few days after Miller’s ardent deflection of blame from the new owners, they removed the “acting” from his title and made him permanent editor.

   Back in early June when it was announced that the Wolfe family was selling the Dispatch to GateHouse Media, the then editor Ben Marrison announced he was resigning because, in his words, he should “step aside to allow the new publisher complete freedom to implement his or her vision.” He said nothing about his future plans but I would speculate that he got a generous financial severance payment and will resurface soon either working for the Wolfe family at Channel 10 that it still owns or in some local PR capacity.
   Miller, managing editor/news for 11 years under Marrison, was immediately elevated to acting editor. Miller has not publicly commented about the wisdom of stepping aside to facilitate a new publisher’s vision, but he has made no mention of offering to resign in deference to the new publisher’s “vision,” did not resign and now winds up with the permanent top job. As Marrison’s key newsroom lieutenant, it is reasonable to expect that Miller will carry on Marrison’s vision, giving Marrison’s resignation pronouncement an empty ring.

   Marrison was a master at using the bully pulpit of his Sunday column to deflect criticism of the Dispatch’s at times misguided news and editorial policies. Miller already appears to be following in his footsteps, much to the chagrin of those of us who would like to see the Dispatch become a paragon of journalistic excellence, applied without fear or favor.

   For instance, the Dispatch is barely covering the charter schools data altering “scandal” because it is partial to charter schools. But it could not cover the Columbus Public Schools data altering “scandal” enough because it is negative toward public schools.

Times fall short, too

   It is true that news organization have a hard time covering themselves fairly and objectively. The New York Times is a leading violator of its usual journalistic excellence when it comes to covering its competitors. In mid-July the New York Times did a lengthy “expose” of the demanding working conditions at Amazon, the online retailer.

   Surprise! The Washington Post, that rivals the Times in covering political news, is now owned by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

   In recent years the Times has gone out of its way to run negative articles about Rupert Murdoch, who, Surprise!, owns the Times’s leading competitor for covering national, international and business news, the Wall Street Journal. Ditto for negative coverage of USA Today, the Times’s rival for covering national news, sports and culture. So if the Times does it -- feathers its own nest by coloring the news to suit its interests – does that make it OK for the top brass at the Dispatch to so same.

   The answer is no. And shame on both the Dispatch and the Times when they fall short.

Going, going, gone

   The extent of cutbacks planned by New Media Investments, the hedge fund parent of GateHouse Media, at the Dispatch was revealed by Tom Knox, a reporter for Columbus Business First.

   Knox learned that GateHouse plans to cut $10 million in expenses at the Dispatch over the next two years in part by offering buyouts of up to half a year’s pay to some employees willing to give up their jobs.

   Depending on the annual salary and benefit costs of employees – I would guess between $50,000 and $100,000 a year – between 100 and 200 employees will be gone before the end of the year. Many will be gone by Labor Day, when the 90-day moratorium on layoffs that the Wolfes got from GateHouse as part of the deal expires.

   Put another way, the newsroom at the Dispatch will be a shade of its former self and coverage of local news events will be severely contracted.

Mistakes, gaffes grow

   Quality control in a newsroom is the copy desk, where editors correct and rewrite articles and write headlines. As the newspaper industry has contracted over the past decade, the ranks of copy editors have been severely depleted. Reporters at some papers are posting their articles directly online without any review or editing. The number of mistakes and gaffes is growing.

   The inevitable quality decline at the smaller-staffed Dispatch may already be underway. The Aug. 19 front page showed that continuations at the end of two articles would be on “Page A1.” Whoops! The front page is A1.

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(ColumbusMediaInsider, copyright, 2015, John K. Hartman, All Rights Reserved)