Some marriages are made in heaven, others in hell. Everyone in the pews will have an opinion on this as a bride and groom stand at the alter, but as we all really know, only time will tell if the union will work to produce two happy, thriving partners. Or whether it will be a disaster.
So it is with the merger of the Edmonton Journal and the Edmonton Sun this week. Both papers have suffered serious declines in ad revenue and readership over the past decade and a half. It is no exaggeration to say both are fighting battles for survival against a wide variety of well-documented economic woes including crushing debt, online competition for advertisers and declining circulations.
As a result, both local dailies have cut deeply into their respective reporting and editing pools to cut costs. Unfortunately, what may look good for the bottom line has been ugly on the pages of both papers with far fewer local stories, and subsequently far less relevance in the lives of local readers.
The Sun’s newsroom shrank to the point where, not counting sports, a few more than half a dozen reporters were left to cover the entire capital region. That’s not much when you start adding the beats – courts, city hall, police, the legislature, editorial writers and columnists, health, education and so on.
At the Journal, the cuts in writing staff have also been deep. The newsroom took its first serious blow as far back as 2003, followed by major cuts in 2008, 2012 and now this week. The combined affect has essentially gutted much of the coverage readers in Edmonton, St. Albert, Spruce Grove, Sherwood Park and the surrounding communities came to expect. Just as that paper’s now tiny entertainment department once covered almost every performance and movie in town, news coverage has followed a similar route, only chasing big headlines. Smaller stories fell off the radar. The paper’s still talented pool of reporters will undoubtedly attempt to continue to dig as they have in past, but with fewer resources at hand that job has just become a whole lot tougher.
When the Edmonton Sun started in the late 1970s, the Journal’s then-publisher declared war. In fact the years proved that as far as news coverage goes, a healthy competition for stories benefited both papers. To be beaten by a rival is a dark day indeed. The benefits of that competition even spread to small papers, such as the Gazette. When an Edmonton daily ran a story about St. Albert, many a reporter has felt the drive to work a bit harder. That was a good thing for readers, which in the end is the true core of this business: Good stories and good pictures.
Whether or not the Internet with all of its platforms proves to be the solution, one thing is abundantly clear. It still has a long way to go. There may be more writers than ever before, but good ones – like those who made their livings in newsrooms – are rare and, more often than not, still toil at a paper publication that pays the rent. If they can’t eat, they can’t write.
Whatever happens, readers must also remember that newspapers still meet many of their needs. We always try to remind ourselves of this privilege as we put the Gazette together. A healthy democracy demands that all levels of government face the scrutiny of skilled reporters who do their best to uncover incompetence and back-door deals. A healthy community needs citizens who know about their neighbours – about their successes, challenges and interests. A thriving society will always need a thoughtful and free exchange of ideas.
