The Demise of the Washington News Bureau

[marmar]

from The American Prospect:



The Demise of the Washington News Bureau

Yesterday The San Diego Union-Tribune became the latest newspaper to shutter its D.C. office. The recent spate of bureau closings strikes a major blow for comprehensive political coverage, but it is also a warning about newspaper survival.

John McQuaid | September 19, 2008 | web only



When the Washington-based Newhouse News Service announced last month it would shut down after Election Day, the Associated Press described it as a "supplemental wire service," a technically correct term that nevertheless conjured up images of something journalistically superfluous, like Sunday-newspaper advertising supplements. In fact, not so long ago, Newhouse's output was a great and diverse read. NNS was a national platform for the Newhouse newspaper chain. It was the home for a dozen individual papers' Washington correspondents, who produced often deep district-by-district coverage of Congress and federal agencies. A separate staff of national reporters wrote stories exploring the fault lines of the American political discussion, including race, religion, and economics -- an experiment in reinventing Washington coverage, or at least intended to give it a good tweak.

Newhouse's demise is, of course, part of the terrible implosion underway in the newspaper business, and it shows how the depth and breadth of Washington coverage is shrinking as newspapers focus dwindling resources on local news. Hardly a week goes by without some regional newspaper announcing the layoff or recall of its Washington correspondent, and those covering national beats are similarly endangered. Just yesterday, The San Diego Union-Tribune, which is up for sale, announced it would shutter its four-person Washington bureau on Nov. 30. Papers in San Francisco, San Diego, Des Moines, Pittsburgh, Hartford, Toledo, Houston, Salt Lake City, Montana, Wyoming, and Maine have all cut back or eliminated Washington coverage in the past two years. Reporters for the Tribune Company papers are fretting over possible additional cuts to their communal Washington bureau as owner Sam Zell wields the knife. I empathize. I worked for Newhouse as a correspondent for the New Orleans Times-Picayune Washington bureau for more than a decade before taking a buyout in 2006. I have many friends among the current and former staff there and at other newspaper bureaus.

As we approach the end of the Bush 43 era, the federal government is more opaque and arguably more mistrusted than at any recent time. Just from the standpoint of brute journalistic force, multiple layoffs mean fewer knowledgeable eyes on the day-to-day business of Congress and the federal government, so more political and bureaucratic shenanigans will go unnoticed -- a win for opacity. There are some promising alternatives emerging but not -- yet anyway -- at the rate at which newspapers are laying off reporters.

But the closing of the Newhouse News Service is also a cautionary tale about the backwardness of Washington journalism in the Internet age. Newhouse had the right idea: Do something different with the Washington bureau. But it was never the kind of "different" that really would have had an impact on a determinedly old-fashioned business. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_demise_of_the_washington_news_bureau