Blog
10.29
Is this the next stage of newspaper's destruction?
MediaBistro.com broke a story that the regaled Wall Street Journal just closed the doors to its entire Boston bureau, leaving nine more reporters to fetch stories on the unemployment line.
A nice, somewhat personal e-mail from WSJ editor Robert Thomson was sent to the dearly departed... and then unceremoniously sent to an anonymous list of media reporters. Whoops.
Colleagues,
Today we told our team in Boston that we are closing the bureau in its present form. The economic background to the closure is painfully obvious to us all. An investigative function will remain in Boston, but the core reporting team will be disbanded, though all nine reporters affected will certainly be able to apply for openings elsewhere on the paper. Coverage of the Boston mutual fund industry will switch to the Money and Investing team and we are creating an enhanced New York-based education team.
Any such decision inevitably stirs apprehension and uncertainty, but there are no plans, nascent or otherwise, to close any other U.S. or international bureau. Meanwhile, the Newswires bureau and the MarketWatch team in Boston will remain at their present staffing levels.
That there has been truly great reporting under the generalship of Gary Putka out of Boston over many, many years is not in doubt. But we remain in the midst of a profound downturn in advertising revenue and thus must think the unthinkable.
Robert
Is this what's next? First, the smaller papers and then, in an effort to save money without ruining the presses, it's time to flip the open sign to closed at its bureaus?
Sure, the reporters can get another gig at the uber-paper, so said Thomson in a story in said uber-paper. Good for them, but that may not be the case for the many reporters praying for advertising harder than advertising executives do.
Be it laziness, convenience or apathy, newspapers are going the way of the Brachiosaurus, Quagga, Cave Lion and the beloved Dodo bird. It was a better day when they were fully staffed (namely for us flacks). It will be a sadder day when they are gone.
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