The changing newspaper industry

They are shutting down our pressroom. While the change won’t directly affect me and my closest co-workers, it is moment for all of us to reflect on what is happening in the newspaper industry.

Our 8,500-daily-circulation product is only one of many that we pump out in the Torrington factory. We did a big re-design in November to make our product bigger, better and with more local content. This, of course, means more work on the editors’ part.

Then we took over the Thomaston Express, a weekly newspaper previously run by our sister publication in Bristol. We also have the Foothills Trader – three different zones – and Good News About Torrington, a weekly newspaper that goes out to every home in Torrington for free.

As if that wasn’t enough, we added on The Granby News, a weekly newspaper covering an town near Bradley Airport – nowhere near any of our other coverage areas. Oh, and I can’t forget about Litchfield County Mom, our 40-page quarterly publication that is going glossy for its second issue in June.

Not only do these publications require daily, weekly or monthly content for the print issues such as stories, photos and calendar items – they all need to be paginated and they all have web sites that need to be updated on a regular basis.

And let’s not forget about the special sections. At the middle of June, we have the Grad Tab, a yearbook-format product of about 40 pages that prints every photo of every high school student who is graduating in our coverage area. Then we have Reader’s Choice, which lists the winners in our annual contest to see who is best at what they do.

But apparently this isn't enough to keep our pressroom going. Since the other newspaper was sold and left us for a cheaper printing firm, our products are moving elsewhere to save the company $375,000.

On any given day, we have two or more products to work on. Our staff consists of five editors, five reporters, and two photographers. That’s for all publications (although editorial is not in charge of content for the Foothills Trader). With each person getting 2 days off per week, that doesn’t leave many people on for each day. That means the main product, that little thing we call The Register Citizen, gets about 5 hours of attention from the editors, at best.

And the reporters? They spend about 6 hours a day working on daily stories, 2-3 hours working on Litchfield County Mom stories, a few hours on Granby/Thomaston/Good News/Arts section stuff, an hour with office meetings, phone calls, clearing out e-mails, and then another hour trying to convince The Boss that they didn’t work any overtime.

And people wonder why there are mistakes. When we get complaints about the proofreaders not doing their jobs, or the editors not knowing anything about grammar, all I want to say is “what proofreader? That job was eliminated ten years ago.” And fixing grammar and spelling mistakes? There are days we don’t even have time to read the stories we put in the paper. That’s pretty bad. Considering that’s what we were hired to do.

With the pressroom gone in a couple of months, we won’t even have the chance to check what we do. Pages will be sent to a location 60 miles away, and nobody will be any wiser.

Is this what the newspaper industry has come down to?

I’d like to think that there are still newspapers out there with writers who actually get to cover their beats, editors who actually have the time to read and edit stories, and managers who have the time to step in and help out with the main product instead of being tied up with making crossword puzzles, blogging about child safety or designing house ads because other departments were just too busy.

I guess we all just need to be happy right now that we have jobs. Pretty soon they'll be shutting down the editorial departments as well. Who needs reporters and editors, anyway? We can just run material submitted from the public and let them do their own editing online.

Bad day at the paper

Today you were supposed to see a really fun, wonderfully written post here.

I get home early Thursday nights. I had big plans last night to spend hours plotting my next entry. Instead, I spent eight hours extra at the newspaper office trying to put the paper to bed.

You see, the way our system is set up, all the daily newspapers in Connecticut owned by our no-longer-New-York-Stock-Exchange-listed company are connected to one central server in New Haven. InCopy and InDesign, the programs we write our stories and lay out our pages in, only exist on said server, and we log into these servers through the internet from all over the state.

It's cheap for the company - it only has to buy a small set of licenses. It's also convenient, because everyone is on the same system and can share articles, photos and pages.

When a transformer blows somewhere near New Haven, however, it isn't convenient for anyone.

Production stopped at five of our daily newspapers around 11 p.m. - 15 minutes before deadline for the Bristol paper and barely two hours before deadline for us.

In Torrington, six pages of news and four pages of sports had been in progress when all programs shut down. Editors went into panic mode. Reporters stood helpless at their desks looking at dark monitors. Grunts could be heard from the sports department.

Our city editor started calling our computer tech guy, who turned out to be on vacation and had no clue what was going on. A couple of calls later, we were told everyone was down for an undetermined amount of time. "We're working on it," we were told.

The publisher came rushing into the office (I swear, this guy never sleeps). Who's got Quark XPress on their computer? Where are there stories we can use? How can we get back on the internet? What's going on with sports?

Within a few minutes, we scrapped up two laptops with wireless connections. Three reporters were rewriting their stories and pages were being designed from scratch in old templates in a program we haven't looked at in over a year.

After all that, the first printed copy came off the press only 45 minutes late. We even managed to help the Bristol crew get the last of its pages done.

So, dear blog readers, I hope you understand if I now choose to get some sleep instead of writing long, interesting posts about life, the universe and everything...

Morbid journalists

Working in journalism, you can get a warped view of the world. It is even morbid, at times.

I sent our photographer out on an assignment last week to photograph former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as he spoke at a local library.
“It’s good to have some file art of Kissinger,” the photographer said. “He’s getting up there in age, and you never know when we’ll need the photos.”

Every night around 9, someone from the Associated Press in Hartford calls our office to see what stories we have for the next day. We tell them about accidents, fires and important court cases.

“Did anyone die?” is the first thing they ask. If the answer is no, the standard reply is, “Eh, I think I’ll pass on that today.”

We frequently get letters to the editor about why assaults and deaths are always on the front page. Why can’t we write about cute bunnies that hop across the road or their kids making the honor roll? Sometimes we do, but it really isn’t news.

When people you know get into trouble

Every reporter – at some point or other – ends up writing about someone they know.

It doesn’t matter if you cover a small town or a big city, if you work in the town where you grew up or in a town thousands of miles away from home... Sooner or later, someone you know will be the subject of a story, and you will be the only one around to write it.

E.J. was an eager man in his early 30s who came to the paper a few months after I had started working there. He used to be involved with the weekend section many years ago, he said, when it was big and colorful and when reporters and photographers actually covered rock concerts and area shows on a regular basis.

Our editor let E.J. come back to help out once a week with club listings and a column about local bands and upcoming entertainment-related events.

It was great help for me, and E.J. was fun to be around. He came in for a few hours, did his thing and then left.

A few months later, E.J. fell off the face of the earth. He had an accident at a construction site where he was working, and he never came back to us after that. Rumors said E.J. was using drugs to relieve his pain. I called his cell phone; his number had been disconnected.

Every so often, we would hear brief updates from our court reporter, T.
“E.J. was in court today,” she would say, or “E.J. is in trouble again.”
E.J.’s mom supposedly filed complaints against him after he allegedly stole thousands of dollars from her to support his habit.

Last night, I called reporter D. while he was at the local police station to ask him to look something up.

“Eh… Viktoria?” he said, cautiously. “There was a big drug bust Friday night.”

“Great!” I said. “Give me some information so I can throw it up on our web site.”

He gave me the name, age and charges. It was E.J.

The polite press of Sweden

A 42-year-old man was on the run from police in Sweden for eight days, suspected of killing a 10-year-old girl. The girl went missing while out riding her bike.

Police finally arrested a man and tied him to other murders in Sweden. They are now testing his DNA to see if several cold case files in Norway and Denmark can be solved.

While pictures of the girl, her crying parents and her quaint hometown were plastered all over the tabloids for a week, photos of the man the Swedish media refers to as “the 42-year-old” didn’t appear until he recently admitted to the murders.

The newspapers all knew who he was. They had his photo. They knew he was a suspect in several murders and on the run from police.

“He could have been totally innocent,” the publisher of one tabloid says in an interview, after a journalism professor wrote an opinion column about publishing names of criminals.

Media’s role in society is to inform the public while doing minimal harm. In the United States, people’s names are printed in the paper from the day they get arrested – it doesn’t matter if they stole a scarf from a local store or if they are accused of killing someone while driving drunk. The only exception are people under 17, juveniles, who are protected by several state and federal laws unless they commit a heinous crime.

In Sweden, newspapers usually do not publish names until a person has been convicted. Sometimes not even then. Pedophiles, for some reason, never get their names in the paper, even after they are sentenced. Why? Because they need to be protected from society after committing such a horrible crime. And, they may be “cured” from their horrible sickness and should then have the right to return to society to live like normal people.

But what about the victims? What about other possible victims? Wouldn’t you like to know if a man convicted of a sex crime moves in next door to your family? Shouldn’t you have the right to know?

The Swedish professor calls for eased-up rules of publishing names. Publishing a suspect’s name “can make witnesses aware that they have important information they need to share with police,” he says. Withholding the names, he says, can put innocent people in harm’s way because others will start to guess who the “42-year-old” really is. Is it my neighbor? He is 42! Then the neighbor has been made into a suspect, because the real suspect was being protected by the media.

The Swedish attorney general needs to take some classes in how to fight crimes from the U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey. For too long, Swedish police, courts and justices have been too lenient. It is time for Swedish officials to step up to protect its people and stop protecting the criminals.

Student newspaper independence

A tak force at my alma mater has ruled on an issue very dear to my heart:

Quinnipiac task force says cut Chronicle loose

As a former editor of the student newspaper The Chronicle, and a proponent of free speech, I have been actively involved in trying to change the way the school controls the newspaper. I have written letters to the editor and letters to all top players at Quinnipiac University regarding this matter. I also tried to help by starting a postcard campaign, insipired by a campaign my former journalism teacher inspired us to do in Sweden in 1997.

The current editor of The Chronicle has done nothing wrong; he has been a great journalist, poking in things administrators rather he didn't. I believe this decision is a great step for students, journalists and the entire communications program at Quinnipiac University.

The world of Winsted

Today I decided I didn't want to be locked up in the office all night - I wanted to go out and see the world. Well, Winsted, at least.

Winsted is a small town a little north of The Register Citizen's home in Torrington.

Most people in Winsted are insane. Public meetings often turn into heated debates that lead to emotional discussions. Angry comments lead to good quotes. Sources pop up out of nowhere because everyone wants to get a point across.

I read about it all the time in our paper. Today, I wanted to see for myself.

Albie thought I was crazy this morning. While dressing for work, I announced I would go to a meeting if I got done with all my pages early.
"You don't need to dress up for that," he said. "It's Winsted."

When I got to the office and told Walt, the Winsted beat reporter, that I wanted to go with him, he said, "Why?" - with a big question mark on his face.
"It'll be fun!" I exclaimed. "I hear there's going to be some interesting stuff going on tonight."

It was true. I had heard something.

A source in Winsted called me up Friday night, telling me about a Board of Education member who allegedly got kicked out of a subcommittee meeting. I spent all Friday night investigating the issue - including 30 minutes on the phone with the board member. An attorney, who interrupted his evening activities to call me, and a Freedom of Information Commission spokesman, on a flight somewhere to see his daughter, both told me this: The board member had no right to attend the meeting's executive session.

But a lot of other issues came out of my probe. The conclusion: You should be at Tuesday's Board of Education meeting. "Well, I'm not really a reporter..." I said. "We'll see what happens."

Bickering started early at the meeting. "Why do you vote on this when you sit on that board as well?" "Why can't we talk about this now?"

All of a sudden, I felt like a reporter again. I could predict what people would do, who would vote for or against what. I knew the motives behind the questions. And during a break, one of the board members and a man from the public both sought me out to hand me piles of documents for further review - even though there were two other reporters there.

When the Competition's reporter asked me about it, I just tilted my head and smiled. Then I started blabbing about all the interesting duties of being a features editor and how much I miss writing. He walked away knowing nothing.
"Wow, that guy never even talked to me once," the Winsted reporter said. "I bet he is really scared that you got something he didn't."

Unfortunately, the stuff I got couldn't be used tonight. It is way more complicated than that. But the Winsted reporter and I got some stories out of the meeting anyway:

Ex-selectman: Molinelli should resign

Winsted woman claims discrimination

Town manager drops in at school board meeting

And hopefully we can stumble upon something good real soon.

I've been busy again...

I happened to do some more writing at work, and some photography. (Also did voice over for a couple of slideshows that will be up on our web site next week - if we can figure out how to get them up there).

City man charged in rape

Two hurt in crash (I also took the photo)

Wild turkey crashes downtown meeting

Truck crashes, hangs on pole support wires (photos too)

It may seem like I enjoy other people's misery... what can I say? There's something really cool about being one of the first people at the scene of an accident, freezing your butt off while trying to figure out what's going on...

Today is the day for Ralph Nader

I can't remember the last time I walked out to the press to grab a fresh copy of our newspaper before heading home. Today I did. My Ralph Nader story was in it.

Of course, I had already spent three days nagging my boss to read it. I also spent the evening tonight laying out the page (with some long-distance help from Albie at home), so I knew what everything would look like. But there's just something cool about having "tomorrow's" paper with you when you walk out the door in the early morning hours.

Ralph Nader story.

Matt Gonzalez story.

Interviewing Ralph Nader

Once in a while, I get to do something cool at work. Today, I interviewed U.S. presidential hopeful Ralph Nader.

This is Nader's fifth run for president. He is 74 years old. He is not affiliated with Republicans or Democrats, which makes his hopes to reach the White House almost impossible.

But Nader differs from those random odd-jobs who decide to run one year, get their 15 minutes of fame, and then drop off the face of the earth. Nader actually has a reputation. He is known as a "consumer advocate," a "social critic" and a "public defender."

His chances of actually becoming president are slim, and he knows it. What he is trying to do is raise awareness of what he says is a flawed electorate system, to stir a debate, bring some change about and open up the presidential race for other people.

One of the towns The Register Citizen covers is Winsted, CT. This also happens to be Ralph Nader's hometown. Nader is still registered to vote in Winsted and still has very strong ties to the area, even though he rarely participates in local events unless it is held to promote one of his many books. However, it isn't often a local resident decides to run for president.

I've written about him before, a couple of brief articles and one editorial.

Since my work with the weekend section is now minimal, my boss and I have discussed other things I can do. All I want to do is write; it's all I've ever wanted to do, although I kept getting into editing because people told me I would be so good at it. My boss now told me I can write an enterprise story a week for our Saturday or Sunday paper.

I can't explain how good it feels to have that exciting feeling in the pit of my stomach again. "My name will be in the paper!" Talking to people on the phone, prying information from people's twisted minds, understanding complicated statistics, getting to the bottom of things... this is what life is all about.

An in-depth feature article on Ralph Nader is in the planning stages. I will post a link when it is published.

When an editor can't stay away from writing...

My job does not usually include writing. Sometimes, however, I cannot help myself.

We are, as usual, short staffed. When interesting stuff happens, I feel that I just have to lend a hand to the reporters...

Nader mulls bid for White House - Friday for Saturday's paper

Winsted to get new town manager - Saturday for Sunday's paper

This is a brief editorial I wrote on the subject, too, for Sunday's paper. Writing editorials is actually part of my job, but the most boring part...

* * * * * * * * *

Some older stories I've written for The Register Citizen, if anyone is interested...

Kidney for Brian

Avoiding Pitfalls of Consumer Fraud

Two arrested for bloody mess

Unfortunately, we switched to a different web host in the late fall, and all stories prior to that are unavailable unless picked up by other sources (like some of the ones above) :-(

Maybe later I will post links to stories I've had published in previous newspapers, in case anyone is intersted in finding out what I do...