CJR: Damage Report

Columbia Journalism Review| Craig Flournoy & Tracy Everbach:

“Management at The Dallas Morning News used a combination of layoffs in 2004 and buyouts in 2006, plus attrition, to slash some two hundred journalists—30 percent of the staff—from the newsroom. ... Those who remain, meanwhile, say the mood is uncertain at best. Circulation is in freefall. Readers increasingly are dissatisfied. Turnover disrupts stability. Many older staff members were pushed out in the layoffs; now some of the younger ones are leaving on their own.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

This CJR report shines a light on a major business story that happened right here in Dallas but received little coverage in Dallas' only newspaper, The Dallas Morning News. The event was the decimation of the DMN's own newsroom and the resulting downward spiral of quality in our one and only local newspaper. The CJR story focuses on interviews with many of the 200 or so newsroom employees who left or were let go in the last few years. In doing so, it inevitably reveals the experience that left with them and the holes that left in the paper.

The most apt quote comes not from a former employee, but from Esther Thorson, an associate dean at the University of Missouri's School of Journalism. The CJR report says "those who try to cut the newsroom to maintain profitability are doomed to failure. 'That’s not a business model,' [Thorson] says. 'That’s a death model.'"

R.I.P. The Dallas Morning News.