Web-powered downsizing

This past Monday, Slate media columnist Jack Shafer wrote a provocative piece arguing that cuts in the newspaper business are not quite the disaster for democracy that they're often portrayed as. Last night he wrote a follow-up in response to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times, both of whom had taken umbrage.

What caught my eye was Shafer's contention that the Web has made journalists far more efficient than they used to be — so much so, he thinks, that it's ridiculous to believe newsrooms need to be as richly staffed as they were a generation ago. Shafer writes:

A middle-school student sitting at a Web terminal has more raw reportorial power at his fingertips than the best reporter working at the New York Times had in, say, 1975. The teenager can't command an undersecretary of defense to return his phone call as the Times guy can, but thanks to Google he can harvest news stories and background information that would take the 1975 model journalist days to collect.

The young amateur can also tap hundreds of free databases serving up scientific, legislative, regulatory, and business information in an afternoon that a team of 1975 reporters couldn't assemble in a week. Give him access to JSTOR, PubMed, Edgar, Nexis, Factiva, and other important sites and he'll write three stories in the time the '70s veteran reports one. Naturally, the kid might not have as good an idea of what to do with the information he's collected, but you get my point: Technology has made today's reporter more productive and more accurate than his forebears. So, if the Los Angeles Times peaked at 1,200 reporters and it's down to about 940 now and Tribune wants to cut it further, it's hardly proof that the corporate meanies are defunding the newsroom.

I want to disagree with Shafer, but at the moment I have to confess that I'm not sure on what grounds. Maybe he's right if his reference point is 1975. But his argument doesn't hold up so well if you look at how much richer many newspapers were in 1999, or 2002.

Still, his basic point is sound. If the Web has made journalists more efficient than they were a generation ago, then it only makes sense that news executives will conclude that they don't need as many of them.

Shafer also makes an observation that we've discussed in class — that not every midsize metro needs a large national and international staff when the New York Times and the Washington Post are just a click away.