Newspapers Were Killed From Within

Up until the mid-80s, newspaper publishers and editors valued their readers, their customers, the people who were counted for ad rates. Every meeting we reporters attended was filled with assignments to get the readers involved. Then the new breed came in, led by executive and managing editors who wanted, as they said, to shake up things. They brought in reporters and sub-editors from papers in the south and east. The new hires didn't know the area, in my case, all of northern California, The Sacramento Bee circulation zone. If a story was good enough for Louisville or Baltimore, it was good enough for Sacramento, they said.

As a further example of what happened to change the dynamics of newsrooms, at my first meeting with a new editor (1986), I said I had been writing columns and stories because the readers liked this and they looked forward to that. Her comment was typical arrogant yuppie: "I don't give a shit what the readers want. I know what's best for them and that's what you're going to write." It wouldn't have been so bad if she had been the only editor to think that way. Instead, it was a mind-set among the new editors. We were ordered to write with attitude and to hell with what anyone thought, especially our customers.

That was the beginning of the end, I think. Yes, the internet has had a dramatic negative effect on newspaper bottom lines. But I really believe that if newspapers had continued to think about their communities, giving their customers what mattered most to them, things might be different today. Sadly, the yuppies ran it all and ran the business into the ground.