Local newspapers stopping the presses; Virus
hastens outlets’ collapse in time of greatest need
for news coverage
James, Meg . Los Angeles Times ; Los Angeles, Calif. [Los Angeles, Calif]18 Apr 2020: A.1.
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Jeff vonKaenel has weathered wildfires, recessions and getting sued by a mayor in his nearly 50 years running
weekly newspapers.
But the Sacramento newsman met his gravest challenge yet last month when public health officials urged
cancellations of large gatherings to slow the novel coronavirus’ spread.
Four days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory, the 69-year-old owner of the
Sacramento News &Review and sister publications in Chico and Reno made the “brutal” call to stop the presses
and lay off 40 staffers.
“This could be the death knell, not only for us but for the dailies that we compete with,” VonKaenel said in an
interview.
He hopes the closure is temporary because he doesn’t want to let down employees or readers of his free
alternative weeklies, which have fearlessly covered deadly police shootings, casinos’ dark side and Sacramento’s
vibrant arts scene.
But the advertisers he depends on — restaurants, breweries, small museums and concert venues — were swept up
in the economic shutdown, and without their support, VonKaenel can’t cover the $45,000 a week it takes to run his
Sacramento paper.
“I think I’m a pretty good salesman, but to convince businesses to buy ads for events they are not having, well, it’s
pretty tough,” VonKaenel said.
Even before COVID-19, America’s newspaper industry was on life support.
More than 1,800 newspapers have folded since the internet became a prime source for news. In 2000, at least 55
million American homes subscribed to a daily paper, about double what it is today, according to Pew Research
Center.
During the last two decades, newspaper chains, including McClatchy, which owns the Sacramento Bee and Miami
Herald, and the former Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune, have tumbled into bankruptcy. Leveraged
buyouts and consolidations have left companies mired in debt. The nation’s largest chain, Gannett Co., which owns
USA Today and 250 daily newspapers, including the Arizona Republic in Phoenix and the Desert Sun in Palm
Springs, merged with another large company in November. It now reaches 1 in 4 daily newspaper subscribers, but
its stock has dropped 85% this year.
Newsrooms have been hollowed, print pages slashed. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, for example, prints just three
days a week. Billionaire Warren Buffett, who had owned the Buffalo News since 1977 and was hailed as a savior of
local journalism, in January unloaded his chain, which includes the Omaha World-Herald, to Lee Enterprises, which
owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Buffett previously conceded that newspapers were “toast.”
Since the Great Recession, nearly half of U.S. newspaper journalism jobs have disappeared, leaving fewer than
38,000 reporters, photographers and editors.
“It’s bad and it’s going to get worse,” news industry analyst Ken Doctor said, predicting the COVID-19 crisis will
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further strain local news: “It’s going to be the 2009 recession on steroids.”
A time of need
In response to the pandemic, local governments and institutions — health departments, hospitals, schools and
businesses — are making vital decisions that affect lives and livelihoods, highlighting how useful local newspapers
can be.
The print industry’s demise has larger implications, Doctor and others say. Without reporters keeping tabs on city
halls, state agencies and community organizations, there would be little accountability. Researchers have found
that newspapers remain the nation’s most comprehensive, fact-based source of information.
The industry’s collapse has been driven by the exodus of longtime advertisers, who have shifted their money to
internet giants Facebook and Google, leading to a precipitous revenue decline. Ad revenue to U.S. newspapers
peaked in 2005 at $49.4 billion; it’s now less than a third of that amount, according to Pew Research Center.
Responding to the crisis, Facebook in late March announced $25 million in emergency funding for local news
through its Facebook Journalism Project. “The news industry is working under extraordinary conditions to keep
people informed during the COVID-19 pandemic. At a time when journalism is needed more than ever, ad revenues
are declining,” Facebook said, adding that it would also spend $75 million to buy newspaper ads.
On Wednesday, Google Inc. announced its own $100-million journalism fund “to deliver urgent aid to thousands of
small, medium and local news publishers globally.”
The need is great. Small dailies and alternative weeklies are among the most threatened. They rely on local
businesses for advertising, rather than big-dollar national advertisers.
In Southern California, the alternative OC Weekly shut down in December and the LA Weekly has absorbed deep
cuts and management turmoil. The Orange County Register’s parent, Southern California News Group, furloughed
newsroom employees. And the Feather River Bulletin in Quincy, Calif., stopped printing this month — after 153
years.
The Los Angeles Times, which was thrown a lifeline in 2018 when biomedical billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong
purchased the paper along with the San Diego Union-Tribune, also is feeling financial pain. The paper has spent 18
months rebuilding its newsroom and expanding its online offering only to be walloped by the virus.
“Advertising revenue has nearly been eliminated,” California Times President Chris Argentieri wrote in a memo to
the newspaper’s staff this week, outlining initial cost-cutting measures, including furloughs and trimming salaries
of high-level managers during the crisis, including the eight top editors.
On Thursday, the company folded three of its community newspapers — the Burbank Leader, the Glendale NewsPress and the La Canada Valley Sun — because they were losing money. The Glendale paper was a pioneer,
publishing since 1905. The Valley Sun popped up in 1946 as the postwar building and population boom began to
reshape California.
Pandemic paradox
The widespread financial woes come even as traffic to newspaper websites has doubled, Doctor said, and
subscriptions to digital sites have dramatically increased as readers rally to support trusted news outlets.
“This [coronavirus] story has been transformational: It has shown the absolute uniqueness and value of local
news,” Doctor said.
It’s a grim paradox, said Kevin Cody, who owns the 45,000-circulation Easy Reader News in Hermosa Beach.
“The irony is that interest in the product is skyrocketing,” Cody said. He laid off his staff, and they’re now collecting
unemployment checks, but they continue to put the paper out. “There is an urgency to the situation, but the
financial basis for the newspaper has just evaporated.”
Last week, 19 Democrats in the U.S. Senate urged their colleagues to provide coronavirus stimulus funding to
news organizations.
“Local news plays an indispensable role in American civic life as a trusted source for critical information,” the
senators wrote. Since the pandemic was declared, they said, local news outlets have been “providing communities
answers to critical questions, including information on where to get locally tested, hospital capacity, road closures,
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essential business hours of operation, and shelter-in-place orders.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), one of the signers, said in an interview that local journalists serve a vital role by
uniting communities and serving as government watchdogs.
“People want good coverage out of local and state government, and that’s something that only local media can do,”
Brown said. “While the New York Times is a great paper, and you’re a great paper … you can’t serve Akron, Ohio,
very well,” Brown said.
Crisis in Cleveland
A drama has unfolded in the newsroom where Brown’s wife, columnist Connie Schultz, used to work. The billionaire
Newhouse family, through its Advance Local division, has maintained two separate newsrooms in Cleveland since
2013. One is a union shop that has long produced the Plain Dealer. The company established a bigger, nonunion
staff for its website, Cleveland.com. The separate staffs contribute to both platforms.
Two weeks ago, the Plain Dealer axed 18 union journalists and four editors. Last week, an additional 10 journalists
agreed to go. Now, there are just six Plain Dealer journalists, including four reporters who are union members.
That’s a stark contrast from 20 years ago, when Cleveland’s newsroom teemed with more than 300 journalists.
Award-winning investigative reporter Rachel Dissell, who started as an intern at the paper 18 years ago, was
among those who volunteered for a layoff.
“This wasn’t the way I wanted things to end,” Dissell, 40, said by phone late last week, trying to hold back tears.
Dissell said she and her colleagues were stunned by the timing of the cuts.
“Even as everything was happening, we were still working — calling people and telling their stories about how the
coronavirus was affecting their lives,” Dissell said. “We’re journalists; we didn’t know what else to do.”
Advance Local declined to comment. But editor Tim Warsinskey, one of the six remaining Plain Dealer newsroom
employees, said in an email that the 32 departures were “emblematic of a larger challenge our industry is facing.”
He noted that, between the two staffs, Cleveland still has about 70 journalists, on par with other Midwestern cities.
California voices
In Northern California, Bradley Zeve, the founder and chief executive of the Monterey County Weekly, recently laid
off seven members of his close-knit staff, including the managing editor.
“Worst day in my career,” Zeve said. “We’ve had some difficult times, but nothing has come close to this.”
His remaining staff has kept the paper going, and they branched out by sending daily email newsletters — an effort
that has quickly grown to 46,000 subscribers.
“The silver lining is that we’ve done some amazing journalism in the last few weeks,” Zeve said. “But so many
businesses that we relied on just closed down, and who knows how many of them will eventually come back. The
future is unknown.”
That is what’s distressing VonKaenel, owner of the Sacramento News &Review. In a March 19 letter to readers, he
warned: “It could be the end.”
Last year, VonKaenel and his wife had borrowed against their home to keep their operation afloat. Now, he’s
waiting to learn whether his application for the federal Paycheck Protection Program will be approved. Concerned
readers also have sent more than $40,000 in donations.
“The support has been incredible. We are so connected in all of our communities,” said VonKaenel, whose weeklies
top 100,000 in circulation.
Even with the presses idle, VonKaenel has been trying to come up with a new business plan, such as teaming up
with a nonprofit or a public radio station.
He worries about the loss of an alternative voice in communities. “It would just be horrible,” he said.
His Chico paper produced more than 300 stories that chronicled the deadly 2018 Camp fire and its aftermath.
This month, a couple of weeks after being laid off because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the staff learned their
coverage had won several prestigious California Journalism Awards.
His Sacramento paper gained surveillance footage and exposed that a deadly police shooting of a black man in
2016 wasn’t a “justifiable homicide” as the police chief publicly said. That chief later retired, and the press
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coverage led to increased scrutiny of police conduct and other reforms.
“I don’t think people fully understand the impact of having accurate information and the watchdog function, and
the changes that can bring,” VonKaenel said.
Caption: PHOTO: ROWS OF RACKS were a more common sight in 2006, when the decline in newspapers’
advertising revenue was just beginning. McClatchy, publisher of the Sacramento Bee, filed for bankruptcy in
February.
PHOTOGRAPHER:Justin Sullivan Getty Images
PHOTO:JEFF VONKAENEL has suspended printing of his Sacramento News &Review because ads have stopped in
the pandemic. He told readers: “It could be the end.”
PHOTOGRAPHER:Terry Hagz Sacramento News &Review
P: GRAPHIC: U.S. daily newspaper circulation
CREDIT: Los Angeles Times
P: GRAPHIC: Falling newspaper advertising revenue
CREDIT:Thomas Suh Lauder Los Angeles Times
DETAILS
Subject: Journalism; Journalists; Coronaviruses; Newspaper industry; COVID-19
Location: California United States–US Sacramento California Southern California Ohio
Company / organization: Name: Pew Research Center; NAICS: 541720
Identifier / keyword: NEWSPAPERS FINANCES BUSINESS CLOSINGS ADVERTISING INTERNET
(COMPUTER NETWORK) COVID 19 (VIRUS) EPIDEMICS PUBLIC HEALTH
Publication title: Los Angeles Times; Los Angeles, Calif.
Pages: A.1
Publication year: 2020
Publication date: Apr 18, 2020
Section: Main News; Part A; Entertainment Desk
Publisher: Los Angeles Times Communications LLC
Place of publication: Los Angeles, Calif.
Country of publication: United States, Los Angeles, Calif.
Publication subject: General Interest Periodicals–United States
ISSN: 04583035
Source type: Newspapers
Language of publication: English
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Copyright: Copyright Los Angeles Times Apr 18, 2020
Last updated: 2020-04-18
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