Project for Excellence in Journalism: Shrinking newsroom staffs hurt quality & other industry changes
Today, the Project for Excellence in Journalism released a study about changing newsrooms that found that shrinking staffs are hurting the quality of newspapers. It also discusses several other industry trends, increasing online news, and challenges to the traditional newspaper revenue model.
“It has fewer pages than three years ago, the paper stock is thinner, and the stories are shorter. There is less foreign and national news, less space devoted to science, the arts, features and a range of specialized subjects. Business coverage is either packaged in an increasingly thin stand-alone section or collapsed into another part of the paper. The crossword puzzle has shrunk, the TV listings and stock tables may have disappeared, but coverage of some local issues has strengthened and investigative reporting remains highly valued.
The newsroom staff producing the paper is also smaller, younger, more tech-savvy, and more oriented to serving the demands of both print and the web. The staff also is under greater pressure, has less institutional memory, less knowledge of the community, of how to gather news and the history of individual beats. There are fewer editors to catch mistakes.”
The research indicates more people are reading the news, despite subscriptions numbers not being as strong as they once were years ago.
Many of us are going through these changes first hand and wondering what the role of the news librarian will and should be. For some of us, it’s not a question of how to keep up with the change, but how to facilitate it in a way tha preserves our role within the news organization and keeps us valuable contributors to the industry. What do we need to do to prove our value, both within our organizations and throughout the profession?
Many news organizations are carrying stories about the study, as are many blogs.
