Charlotte Hall is editor of the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel and the president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Reach her via e-mail at chall@orlandosentinel.com.
MEMORIES WASHED OVER ME AS I studied The New York Times photo of a small Connecticut newsroom. There, seated at a cluttered desk, was Bill Sarno. I flashed back 37 years to the newsroom of the weekly Paramus (N.J.) Post. I was putting the paper together, and Bill Sarno was writing editorials in a small, cluttered office. He was my boss. He was also my friend.
Bill's current paper, The Bristol Press, was at death's door, and Times columnist Dan Barry had gone there in December to write a prose elegy for a local institution. Luckily, reports of the Press' death turned out to be premature, as a buyer emerged in January.
Bill Sarno and I started together at a group of weeklies in Northern New Jersey. I learned everything from reporting to paste-up, a lot of it from Bill. We had fun every day, and the future seemed cloudless. After several years, I moved on to the Bergen Record. Bill committed his life to small-community journalism.
Today, my company is in bankruptcy; Bill's paper narrowly escaped death. Is it much different for any of us? And yet, we believe in our hearts that community journalism must go on and will go on.
The Bill Sarnos of today, the eager 25-year-olds, are out there. Some work in our newsrooms, helping create the digital community, some report and write for online-only local news sites, some run their own their virtual newsrooms online, some are independent bloggers and Twitterers (has that become a word?). I daresay few outside of newspapers are earning a living wage. And that's the problem, simple and plain.
I remember asking my paper's CFO about a year ago: "If we stripped away all the print costs - the presses, the paper, the trucks, the delivery costs, the single-copy boxes, the home delivery marketing costs - could we support our newsroom?" Answer: "No." We're going to get closer to a real-life answer in 2009, as some papers begin to drop home delivery on several days - or altogether.
Frankly, I worry far less about national and international news than I do about the disappearance of local news from metropolitan areas like Orlando and towns like Bristol. Between all-news TV, increasingly robust Web-only publishers, foundation-funded investigations, national newspapers and magazines, the big picture stories will get discovered and told. Not so at the local level.
Some friends who have left the industry tell me they feel bad for those of us still hanging around newspapers. Well, I don't want pity. I am proud of our profession and filled with admiration for all the editors who are leading their newsrooms through crisis.
Unlike Dan Barry, I am not about to write the obituary for community journalism, and I doubt you are either. We are battling to save local news, and I'm betting on smart editors and the eager 25-year-olds. They have time, and they grasp the digital present.
The Pulitzers and ASNE, two of journalism's most venerable institutions, late last year announced changes that recognized the media world as it is today: both opened the door to online news Web sites with no print component. ASNE also proposed taking the word "paper" out of its name, embracing the idea that the platform on which we practice journalism just doesn't matter anymore.
I think Bill Sarno would like the changes. It has never been about the physical paper for him. It is about reporting on the town board meeting, reviewing the local play, covering the high school football game, printing the Scout awards, finding joy with other journalists. And about purpose and tenacity -traits we certainly need this year.
"We're going to go forward until somebody says we're not," Bill told Dan Barry. "This is what I am; this is what I do."
I rejoice that Bill's paper has found a way forward. Keep your fingers crossed for more good news from the front lines of our war. *