On the Civil Eats blog, Paula Crossfield writes about the serious consequences of The Des Moines Register's decision this week to lay off Philip Brasher, the well-known agriculture reporter in Washington.
"Brasher," she says today, "was one of the only reporters who was not working for agriculture industry-sponsored outlets in the room at Senate and House Agriculture Committee hearings, and played a key role in informing the public about these as well as the inner workings of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. For the most part, the agriculture industry will now have a free reign over coverage of national food policy issues in the Midwest."
Asked for comment, Register Publisher Laura Hollingsworth -- who also is head of Gannett's Midwest regional group of newspapers -- said:
"While we made the difficult decision this week to close our Washington, D.C., office, we maintain a 45-year reporting veteran in Des Moines who covers the agricultural issues that affect Iowa and the Midwest. We also are augmenting his coverage with resources from Gannett’s ContentOne team. Fully leveraging our resources in Iowa and Washington allows us to still provide comprehensive political and agricultural coverage for our readers in Des Moines and beyond."
We could fertilize a lot of farmland with statements like that.
Hollingsworth's is an increasingly common, and false, refrain from publishers and other senior managers whenever the ax falls: Less is the same. (Or, in the case of The Tennessean, it's actually more.) Worse still, Hollingsworth glosses over the fact that Brasher was a big contributor to ContentOne's ag coverage.
On Twitter, Brasher wrote: "Years with @DMRegister were wonderful. Real pros have lost jobs they loved -- and still working their butts off there."
To be sure, Brasher wasn't the only Register journalist who lost his job when Gannett laid off 700 U.S. newspaper employees on Tuesday. Among the other 12 in Des Moines: Jane Schorer Meisner, who won the highest of journalism's highest honors: a 1991 Pulitzer Prize in public service for groundbreaking reporting that -- with the victim's consent -- publicly identified a woman who'd been raped. Meisner's work, the Pulitzer judges said, prompted widespread reconsideration of the traditional media practice of concealing the identity of rape victims.
The Register's weekday circulation is 108,247; Sunday, 211,880.
(K Street?)
[Image: today's Register, Newseum]
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| Brasher |
Asked for comment, Register Publisher Laura Hollingsworth -- who also is head of Gannett's Midwest regional group of newspapers -- said:
"While we made the difficult decision this week to close our Washington, D.C., office, we maintain a 45-year reporting veteran in Des Moines who covers the agricultural issues that affect Iowa and the Midwest. We also are augmenting his coverage with resources from Gannett’s ContentOne team. Fully leveraging our resources in Iowa and Washington allows us to still provide comprehensive political and agricultural coverage for our readers in Des Moines and beyond."
We could fertilize a lot of farmland with statements like that.
On Twitter, Brasher wrote: "Years with @DMRegister were wonderful. Real pros have lost jobs they loved -- and still working their butts off there."
To be sure, Brasher wasn't the only Register journalist who lost his job when Gannett laid off 700 U.S. newspaper employees on Tuesday. Among the other 12 in Des Moines: Jane Schorer Meisner, who won the highest of journalism's highest honors: a 1991 Pulitzer Prize in public service for groundbreaking reporting that -- with the victim's consent -- publicly identified a woman who'd been raped. Meisner's work, the Pulitzer judges said, prompted widespread reconsideration of the traditional media practice of concealing the identity of rape victims.
The Register's weekday circulation is 108,247; Sunday, 211,880.
(K Street?)
[Image: today's Register, Newseum]
Hollingsworth's comment is just another nail in the content is king coffin. How people like her and Silverman (who clearly needs a diagnosis)can be so utterly delusional just makes me sad for the industry.
ReplyDeleteOnly an idiot Gannettoid could spin the layoff of a 45-year veteran and a Pulitzer Prize winner as a good thing.
ReplyDeleteShow some guts, Hollingsworth, and earn your high salary. Just say, "Yeah, it sucks. The people in corporate want more bonuses, so we're giving you less."
For Des Moines not to have a reporter covering agriculture is suidal. For God's sake, Des Moines, look around your city and tell me what functions there are not connected in some way to federal agricultural policies. For example, Des Moines, how are you going to like it when Congress decides it's time to cut federal overspending, and so opts to go the best way to do that is to go the way of New Zealand and end agricultural subsidies. Or how about if Congress decides all these global protests about our ethanol program being a greedy waste of food impoverished and starving people need, and so Congress cuts subsidies for corn ethanol. Bet your subscribers would scream bloody murder if either of those two things happened. If you had an agriculture reporter in Washington, he or she would see this coming and give you some early warning signals. With no reporter here, you will just wake up one morning and turn on the TV to discover CNN reporting it's a done deal in this debt limit fight. How damn silly and short-sighted will you feel then, Des Moines?
ReplyDelete3:42: Well thought out argument. This just proves how little thought went into who to let go during this round of layoffs. I have seen posts where political cartoonists were let go, pulitzer prize winners, and now this? Who is valued at this company? What does this company stand for? When the only thing that matters is the bottom line, the product is bound to suffer. Hollingsworth is nothing more than a puppet. I seriously wonder if she has an original thought in that brain of hers. We need people at corporate who actually understand the newspaper business. As hard as Gary Watson was to stomach, he at least understood this business and the importance of a newspaper's content. This would be comical if it weren't so devastating.
ReplyDeleteP.S. And don't expect your member of Congress or senator to keep you informed, because they will have already signed off on the deal. The funky Iowa caucuses notwithstanding, the last Republican presidential candidate to court the farm vote was Eisenhower. The Republicans, as youo read on the wires, are today more interested in entrenching their hold in the south and making inroads on Democrats with Tax Party conservatives composed of former conservative Democrats.
ReplyDeleteFarm issues in Washington are now a specialty reporting field, of interest only to regional publications. The AP's farm reporter has to cover agriculture nationwide, not regional corn and pig interests that you are very interested in. The AP farm report is cotton, orange juice and other such issues involving crops that won't grow in Iowa, no matter how much federally subsidized fertilizer you pump into the ground. Remember that when the greens join Democrats in the Iowa caucuses to push Jerry Brown as the Democratic presidential candidate the next time.
The DMR retreated to the central part of Iowa years ago, forsaking the state's rural communities for the city and suburban dwellers in the "golden circle." The paper -- for all the good people still laboring there -- is a shadow of what it once was. It is no surprise that circulation, too, is a shadow of what it once was.
ReplyDelete3:57 It's not the bottom line. What amazes me is in the midst of all this angst and agony, Gannett is the most profitable of all the newspaper companies. Do a search using Google Finance on the Gannett stock symbol GCI, and look under the stock chart that crops up halfway down the page there are the other newspaper companies side-by-side. Just look at the figures for GCI compared to the NYT or SSP, or MNI, etc. It is not "the bottom line." Repeat, it is not the bottom line. As posters here have said, it is how executives are rewarded with bonuses for doing this.
ReplyDeleteGannett is a corporation masquerading as a newspaper.
ReplyDeleteDeath by thousand paper cuts.
ReplyDeleteI was recently talking to someone in the military who said the same thing that has happened here to Washington agriculture policy has already happened to military reporting. Both agriculture and military reporting are specialized activities, meaning that you just can't throw someone into it and expect them to begin writing. There is a learning curve. The Pentagon responded by "embedding" reporters with military units so they could learn by doing what the rank and file are doing and it's worked out ok. So how do you embed an agriculture reporter? Where do you find a reporter who can overnight understand the complexities of federal government agricultural subsidy programs? Why is corn heavily subsidized, but wheat lightly subsidized. Why do the federal subsidies for milk vary across the country? Why is there a peanut subsidy but none for any other vegetable? Why is there no subsidy at all for beef or any meats or eggs? So do you now allow some cub reporter to bore readers while he tries to figure out how these subsidies work or don't work, and why they are there? How pitiful for a newspaper representing a state that gets the highest agriculture subsidies of any state in the union.
ReplyDeleteHere are a couple of tributes to Phil Brasher:
ReplyDeletehttp://irjci.blogspot.com/2011/06/des-moines-paper-lays-off-perhaps-best.html
http://civileats.com/2011/06/24/why-laying-off-ag-reporter-philip-brasher-is-bad-for-food/
Holy fucking shit. And Jim is correct -- that is what Hollingsworth is peddling.
ReplyDeleteNewsflash: ContentOne is gone, gone, gone. Has been for weeks.
ReplyDelete8:20 - does this mean there's no ContentOne staff remaining in Crystal Palace since Connell left?
ReplyDeleteContentOne can't be gone! Laura Hollingsworth just said the Register would be leveraging ContentOne to provide comprehensive political and agricultural coverage to its readers in Des Moines and beyond!
ReplyDeleteShe wouldn't make that up, would she?
The DMR not having an ag reporter would be like a capital city newspaper not covering their state legislature.
ReplyDeleteI like Laura, but she's scooping it with both hands here
ReplyDeleteWhy does a capital city newspaper need a legislative reporter? The clarion-ledger, which used to have 3 covering the legislature, then 2, then 1, now has zero. The latest quit 2 weeks ago and the position has been frozen, along with about five others.
ReplyDeleteClassic Gannett.
ReplyDeleteFire the most competent journalists and then blather on about the company's emphasis on watchdog reporting.
Best of luck getting off this sinking ship.
Some of this country's top journalists have walked out the door of the Register (or been kicked out) over the last few years. Ken Fuson, John Carlson, Brian Duffy, John Gaps and Sean Keeler are gone. Among others, they maintained the Register's tradition as one of America's best newspapers. No more, folks. The paper is increasingly thin, shallow and irrelevant. It's over for the Register. It's laughable that corporate pretends otherwise. Iowans know better.
ReplyDeleteI forget, what year did Duffy win his Pulitzer?
ReplyDeleteRegarding the original story, does anyone realize that "free rein" does NOT have a "g" in it? Too often, lately, I've seen people writing "free reign". That means nothing. A "free rein" is when you are not in control. But it's not spelled "free reign [sic]".
ReplyDeleteThank you for allowing me that editorial moment.
Let me join the chorus: Phil Brasher is a great reporter and probably the go-to guy in Washington on many ag issues, especially ethanol. I guess nothing happens in Washington that affects Des Moines or anyplace in Iowa now.
ReplyDeleteWhile no one wants to be without work, I have faith that Phil will find a new job that values his skills quickly. And I'd tell anyone in the DC shop at Gannett: Run for the exit.
Gannett: All the excuses for bad decisions are in reach.
ReplyDelete6:25 - It's an ag-story, should have been free rain?
ReplyDeleteAlso tired of seeing cue instead of queue, altar instead of alter, effect instead of affect, boarder instead of border, pore instead of pour.
Seriously, if your (another grate won) going to research important papers, why would you want to pour anything over them. It's PORE dammit.
Learn the language. Don't rely on an editor, there (!!!) busy enough.
signed,
a raging homophonaphobic
9:37 Happy to see you out of the closet.
ReplyDeleteThe Register is a ship without a rudder and is losing it's relevance in Iowa/Des Moines quickly.....recent actions will quicken the pace.
ReplyDeleteYou have to shake your head at the vision/plan Hollingingsworth & the higher ups are executing. They speak of the importance of content, information and so on; yet cut the key sources and producers of such. They're chopping themselves off at the knees.
I liken it to field generals exhausting all their resources to win the battle..... forgetting the goal is to win the war. The Register will wither on the vine while other more savvy media companies thrive.
I truly feel sorry for those losing jobs. But, they will survive and likely flourish while being free of the pressure. Don't look back folks.....run and find your new opportunities.
Doing journalism just is too expensive, it seems. Gannett may not be alone in the ever shrinking list of experts and credible journalists that we are trading for just producing a grind ( and even that is being reduced ). We are becoming what so many said is NOT what we want, a shopper hand and delivery wrap.
ReplyDeleteI know the answer, but have to ask what ever happened to selling the news and letting the news sell? Sad truth is too little money for corporate ownership is possible currently. And home ownership isn't possible because money is still found in the squeeze.
Newspapers are for profit businesses but the DM Register takes it to an extreme. If they can make a dime on something (there little bike ride, a festival, or political slant) they are behind it 100%. The minute the cash stops (Smart Talk Series) they drop it fast.
ReplyDeleteThe Register only gets behind things if it will eventually benefit the Register; and their OP/Ed pieces reflect it.
Their little bike ride costs host communities thousands and thousands of dollars. Yet the Register dictates what their "Hosts" have to do will do and so forth.
The Register rakes in huge money while others foot-the-bill. Nice......anyone know what that little bike ride does to their bottom line?
@9:37 a.m. I feel your pain. Here's another pet peeve, taken directly from the home page of a state Web site.
ReplyDeleteThe mud continues to grow as fans seem to continue to make due with it around the grounds at Country USA.
Guess we don't need no stinkin' editors.
Hey, at least we had sun today, 3:26. With all the reign we've had, we've paid our do's.
ReplyDeleteThe Des Moines Register at one time was one of the top editorial newspapers in the country. Under Hollingsworth's leadership it's questionable that it's even the best one in the state of Iowa.
ReplyDeletePoor Laura Hollingsworth. Sounds like nobody really respects her. As a citizen in Des Moines who relied on the paper for my ag news, I'm not happy. I am canceling my subscription. Gannett sucks!
ReplyDeleteCapital city papers still have legislative reporters?
ReplyDeleteNashville's Tennessean hasn't had a full-time Capitol Hill reporter in years. They now pull most of their coverage from the other newspapers in the state that continue to staff the bureau, using a regional sharing agreement, at the legislature, or AP.
Laura is a Good German. She's only following orders. She likely hopes it will be an adequate defense when a history is written of the demise of the Des Moines Register.
ReplyDeleteNo Ag reporter for the D M Register in Washington at a time when the Secretary of Agriculture is the former Governor of Iowa? Stunning.
ReplyDeleteAs for their "little bike ride", the overnight communities along the route make thousands of dollars and are given a hefty check by the RAGBRAI office after the ride over and the final numbers have been tallied. Does the ride make money? yup, probably over a million bucks. It used to go to various charities in the DM community. It's anybody's guess if that is still the case.