Save Our Press

According to Mark Potts, a media consultant and former Washington Post editor, this past week has been especially brutal for newspaper employees across the nation.

In a recent blog entry on recoveringjournalist.com, Potts lays out the bloodbath that took place over several days. One of the announcements touched a soft spot for me: The Palm Beach Post, a newspaper I spent nearly six years at in my 20s, is eliminating 300 jobs across all departments, including about 130 in the newsroom. According to my sources at the newspaper, that amounts to about a 40-50% cutback in the newsroom, an unprecedented rollback.

There is no question that the papers must slash their expenses with urgency to adjust to the stormy economic seas they are in now. We’re all trying to survive a tsunami of economic forces that will definitely leave some communities without newspapers before it’s over.

Potts rightly points out that newspapers aren’t innocent bystanders in this tragedy. The executives who run many of the big chain papers, Potts says, were too smug and slow to recognize the need for change, to act with urgency, and to diversify their revenue streams, among other things.

I hope to raise more public awareness with a documentary on an industry in the grips of a crisis. Won’t you join me?