Are Newspaper Publishers Needed?

As a child growing up in Alhambra, California I still recall seeing newspapers throughout our home, my grandmother was an avid reader, and would spend hours with the broadsheet spread open. My grandfather and my father both worked for the Los Angeles Times, so the Times was always readily available. 

My grandparents and parents have all moved on to heaven, yet I have continued the tradition of always having a newspaper in my household, just doesn’t feel right not having the hardcopy nearby. Unfortunately after moving from San Dimas to La Puente I had to discontinue my subscription to The Daily Bulletin as I live too far west for their delivery area. I still have two newspapers delivered daily, the Los Angeles Times and the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, with LA Weekly delivered via snail mail.

My personal tenure at the Los Angeles Times ran from 1972 to 2011, with the 1970’s and 80’s the heyday for the newspaper. During my first two decades at the newspaper several presidents would visit the newspaper, with the pope himself coming to pay Times Mirror Square a visit, those days of politicians visiting the newspaper seem to have become but a memory.

Newspapers have attempted to adapt and retain readers and advertisers to no avail as the Internet age continues to expand, and pull subscribers away, leaving the base readership over forty years of age. So it’s easy to understand newspapers are not dying, their readers are.

The CEO of the new Tribune Company, Peter Liguori, is investing $2.7 billion in the television industry and nothing in newspapers, which reveals the future profits of this fading industry. With a possible tax bill of $250 to $500 million hanging over the new Tribune Company, would anyone really be interested in purchasing the newspapers under the control of this media giant? 

Unfortunately cutting costs at newspapers has taken priority at a newspaper near you, as the sinking ships scramble to remain afloat in the rough waters of the Internet, with many sinking into memory. Staffs have been sacrificed, with many papers resorting to scaling back production to publishing three or four days per week as their circulation continues the downward trend. 

Mr. Liguori has some very tough decisions to make regarding the Tribune newspapers and making their appeal to a possible buyer inviting, one area that I’ve never heard mentioned is the publisher position. Are newspaper publishers really a position that is needed, or have they outgrown their usefulness?

The savings of eliminating all Tribune newspaper publishers would not save the newspapers from the inevitable, but it will add a few years of life to this struggling industry.