On Monday, the New York Daily News laid off half its editorial staff in a massive overhaul that reverberated throughout the newspaper industry. The ostensible reason given was that the owners of the paper, the Chicago-based Tronc company, want to focus more on digital. The paper has also been losing money for years.
But this isn’t solely about the Daily News. This is about the future of daily newspaper journalism, and whether we want seasoned, well-trained and competent reporters covering local city halls, the courts, the school systems, and holding politicians to account while speaking truth to power.
The decline of the newspaper industry is a tale of the Internet, really, and how newspapers have been unable to compete with stripped-down, buzzy websites that give you a little news washed down with a catchy headline and a cat photo. Think Buzzfeed.
The Daily News is 99 years old, and in my mind it’s a tragedy that it didn’t make it to 100. The paper is perhaps most famous for its iconic 1975 cover photo of then-President Gerald R. Ford with a headline that stated: “Ford To City: Drop Dead.” The story was about Ford’s refusal to send federal aid to an ailing and bankrupt New York City. The cover was so powerful that Ford later said it contributed to his loss to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential elections.
The Daily News laid off more than 40 newsroom staffers on Monday, which is half its editorial staff. Many people are now questioning how the paper will continue to function and publish the kind of in-depth, deeply-researched reporting that made it so famous.
Full disclosure: I’m a New York Times reader. But I loved the News’ sports section, and their covers, and occasionally I would read a deep dive article. But The Daily News was the city’s working class paper, beloved by hardworking readers of all backgrounds and ethnicities.
When I was a kid growing up on the Upper West Side in the 80’s, I would commute to Stuyvesant High School in the Village. You could always separate people by whether they were reading the News, which fit perfectly in your lap, or the Times, which was a broadsheet that required a lot of folding, tucking, and annoying one’s fellow subway passengers to be able to read on the train.
The Daily News was the city’s outer-borough paper, along with parts of Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut. To lose a paper of this magnitude, which had such a deep and reciprocal connection with it’s readers, truly is a tragedy.
Tronc, the company that bought the news, has brought in Robert York, a media executive, to run the paper. York has said the News will now focus on breaking news, particularly about crime, civil justice and public responsibility.
But it’s hard to see how a bare-bones staff will be able to do the kind of in-depth reporting that earned the News a Pulitzer Prize, with ProPublica, for its 2017 reporting on the New York Police Department’s abuse of eviction rules.
Stories like these are essential to protecting the welfare of citizens, and to holding powerful institutions responsible for violations of the public trust. Without these stories, our democracy gets smaller, our civic life is degraded, and the powerless lose a voice that regularly championed them.
Just last week, the News showed its fearless, combative metal with a cover following President Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin that featured the headline “Open Treason” and a cartoon of the President holding hands with a shirtless Putin and simultaneously firing a gun at Uncle Sam’s head. Bang! That’s speaking truth to power.
Jim Rich, the editor of the paper, who was also laid off on Monday, summed up the state of affairs within the newspaper industry expertly when he tweeted on Monday: “If you hate democracy and think local governments should operate unchecked and in the dark, then today is a good day for you.” He also changed his Twitter bio to read: “Just a guy sitting at home watching journalism being choked into extinction.”
Wow. That’s powerful stuff. Because today’s drastic staff cuts at the News are about more than just a storied New York newspaper. They’re about the future of American democracy, and whether we will continue to prioritize holding public officials accountable and speaking truth to power, or whether we will instead let the power brokers and the oligarchs continue to expand their reach while destroying long-held American notions of freedom, equality and democracy in the process.
So yes, you should cry for the New York Daily News today. We all should.
I know I will.
