"Does firing real journalists actually cut costs?," asks Choire Sicha in the wake of last week's editorial layoffs at the two newest Creative Loafing papers. "A look at any newspaper's most popular stories suggests the most obvious thing of all: That reporting actually makes money for newspapers. ... So why does the Chicago Reader think ditching the asset of news will bring them profitability?" He thinks that there's "no reason" alt-weeklies can't own local web traffic, and that will in turn bring a more stable financial picture, but is dismayed to see that not happening. "So far, the owners' response to financial crisis seems to be: Devote fewer staff to both web and print and squawk a lot, which is just stupid," Sicha writes.
"Friday was a rough day at the Loaf, perhaps even rougher at our new brethren papers in Washington and Chicago," writes Creative Loafing (Atlanta) editor-in-chief Ken Edelstein. "In Atlanta, we laid off four sales people, a marketing assistant, a sales assistant and our wonderful assistant distribution manager." He adds that the six-paper company is going through the same sort of difficult transition that's hitting other media companies, before noting that his paper's online readership continues to grow. "How that audience growth translates into ad dollars is the business question that [CEO] Ben [Eason] and the folks on the sales side of our business are going to have to grapple with for a long time -- and continuously."
The Times columnist says that given all of the newspaper industry's woes, last week's Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper newsroom layoffs might not seem significant. But Carr, who was editor of the City Paper in the 1990s, thinks the cuts illustrate the larger issue of an industry-wide abandonment of investigative journalism. Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason says that's not the case. "We are not trying to make any other statement here other than it is a competitive world out there and we are doing what we can to make sure we are putting out an excellent paper in the communities we serve," he tells the Times.
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