Last week newspaper publisher McClatchy Co., which owns five South Carolina newspapers, announced it is cutting 10 percent of its workforce. Columbia’s The State said cuts would affect about a dozen newsroom positions. The Sun News of Myrtle Beach said it would shed nine jobs, or about 3.6 percent of its staff. The Herald of Rock Hill said it would not eliminate any positions. The Beaufort Gazette and The Island Packet of Hilton Head have not said whether they will cut jobs.

What does this mean for readers? Chris Kromm, editor of Facing South, published by the Institute for Southern Studies, offers this analysis.

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Reports that newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. is slashing 1,400 jobs this month — 10 percent of its national workforce — sent shockwaves through the media industry and served as a grim reminder of the precarious state of newspapers.

But McClatchy’s massive bloodletting raised a bigger question: When newspapers don’t have reporters, who’s keeping the public informed and shedding light on the state of democracy?

The cuts will be especially hard in the South, where McClatchy owns 15 newspapers. And although McClatchy insists cuts in news reporting will be less than seen at Gannett and other chains, newsrooms will definitely feel the knife.

A survey of the carnage: The Charlotte Observer will cut 123 jobs, or 11 percent of its workforce. The Miami Herald plans 250 job cuts, 17 percent of workers there. The Herald-Leader in Lexington, Ky. is dropping 17 positions. In Raleigh, N.C., the News & Observer is cutting a total of 70 jobs, 16 of them in the newsroom.

But not all will suffer equally. As the Lexington Newspaper Guild pointedly observed, McClatchy gave CEO Gary Pruitt an $800,000 bonus last year and just hired a new corporate vice president, even as the company’s stock was spiraling downward:

The Guild does not believe it is humane when employees who have put in a lifetime of service to McClatchy and KnightRidder are thrown to the curb, while McClatchy’s excessive corporate bureaucracy remains untouched.

McClatchy’s corporate mindset — so common in today’s Big Media — offers clues to the real problems facing newspapers. It’s not necessarily readership: As McClatchy admits, online readership grew 41 percent in the first quarter of 2008. The problem is an economic mismatch between declining ad revenues and shareholder demands for high profit margins on one hand, and the money needed for in-depth reporting on the other.

Profit-driven journalism doesn’t just shrink the number of reporters readers can count on to do in-depth reporting — it also affects the kind of coverage we get.

For example, stories about the economy are usually told from the standpoint of business — not everyday workers and consumers. A new study by the Center for American Progress finds that TV and newspaper economic coverage heavily tilts towards the viewpoint of economic elites. In stories on the minimum wage and trade, “the views of businesses were sourced more than one-and-a-half times as frequently as those of workers,” the study found. In stories on unemployment, “businesses were quoted or cited over six times as frequently as were workers.”

So much for the “liberal media.”

Big Media will always be motivated to chase higher profits — and the news coverage that will guarantee big returns. But democracy demands a different bottom line — especially today. As journalist Bill Moyers said in his speech to the National Conference on Media Reform earlier this month in Minnesota:

[W]hat we need to know to make democracy work for all Americans is compromised by media institutions deeply embedded in the power structures of society … [O]ur dominant media are ultimately accountable only to corporate boards whose mission is not “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for the whole body of our republic, but the aggrandizement of corporate executives and shareholders; organizations whose self-styled mandate is not holding public and private power accountable so there is an equilibrium in society, but aggregating their interlocking interests; organizations whose reward comes from the manufacturing of news and information as profitable consumer commodities rather than the means to empower morally responsible citizens.
As Thomas Jefferson said, “Information is the currency of democracy.” In-depth coverage and hard-hitting investigative reporting is vital to the health of our politics and culture — whether it turns a buck or not. The need for fearless, independent media — like Facing South and others — is needed now more than ever.

You can do your part to support independent media and investigative reporting with a donation to the Institute’s Investigative Reporting Fund. Please visit here to make your tax-deductible contribution today.

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INSTITUTE INDEX – Facing McClatchy’s ax

Size of workforce cuts announced this month by California-based newspaper chain McClatchy: 10 percent

Jobs lost: about 1,400

Jobs lost at the Miami Herald: 250, or 17 percent of the workforce

At the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer: 123, or 11 percent

At the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer: 70, or 8 percent

At the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, which is unionized: 17, or 4 percent

Annual savings expected as a result of the cuts: $70 million

Year McClatchy went heavily into debt to buy the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain: 2006

Debt remaining from the deal even after McClatchy sold a dozen former Knight-Ridder papers in slow-growing markets: $2.5 billion

Proportion of McClatchy ad revenue that comes from papers in Florida and California, which have been hit hard by the housing market crunch: more than 1/3

Fall in sales of print ads in the first quarter for U.S. newspapers overall: 14 percent

Last time there was such a dramatic quarterly decline: more than 30 years ago

Growth in McClatchy’s online audience in 2007: 25 percent

In the first quarter of 2008: 41 percent

Gain in online ad revenue McClatchy reported last month: 12.9 percent

Drop in McClatchy’s stock price in reaction to the job-cut announcement: 13 cents, to $8.02

Fall in company’s stock value over the past year: more than 70 percent

Shares of McClatchy stock CEO Gary Pruitt beneficially owns: 13 million

Last year’s pay for Pruitt: $4.6 million

Pruitt’s additional bonus in 2007: $800,000

Salary of a newsroom aide laid off from one McClatchy paper: barely $20,000

Year in which McClatchy was founded by an Irish immigrant fleeing the potato famine: 1857

Sources available on request from sue@southernstudies.org