October 02, 2008
An editor stands down to stand up
Spokane’s Steve Smith resigns
to fight for journalism, “regain my voice”
Steven A. Smith just resigned as editor of The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash. Smith’s departure was part of a 25 percent cut in the newsroom staff announced this week. With those cuts, Smith said, the newsroom will number about 85, just over half the number in 2000.
Smith told me today that after six years as editor, 36 years in journalism, and the last year relentlessly trying to develop revenue streams that would save newsroom jobs, it was time for him to go.
Two reasons:
1. Smith no longer he could sustain journalism that met his standards of quality in a newsroom wracked by deep cuts and uncertainty about the future.
“The journalism that’s important to me is no longer possible,” he said.
2. By resigning, Smith says, “I regain my voice.” Smith said he has not felt free to speak out about the journalistic decline that comes from cuts in an industry environment that promises more with less. “I simply wasn’t willing to stand up and tell people things would be better or even OK. And our publisher needs someone who can do that.”
“It is time to stop standing behind our salaries, our bonuses and our pensions and stand up and say what needs to be said”—that short-term thinking and cutbacks are “dooming our organizations to irrelevance and causing irreparable harm to our systems and society without consideration of the larger loss,” Smith said.
For Smith, resignation punctuates this thought: “It is no longer my job or our job to save newspapers. Our job is to save journalism and the values that underlie newspaper journalism,” such as the free flow of information and aggressive coverage of government.
If you think Smith has been a newsroom curmudgeon who resisted change or championed principal without regard for pragmatic implications, think again. Smith’s Transparent Newsroom brought readers into news meetings and other newsroom decision-making. Smith has made it his mission to push the local journalism of his newsroom across as many platforms as possible—Web, radio, print, even a little television—as a way to create revenue and hold off staff cuts.
In July,during an intensive conference at Knight Digital Media Center, Smith reflected on the challenges:
“If we don’t change more dramatically and faster, there will not be an industry to support the sort of value-driven journalism that is at the heart of our craft.
“The encouraging news is that the tools we need to make the needed changes are readily available to us and that our ability to deliver quality news and information can only be enhanced…if we make the bold leaps.
“And there is the rub. Are we willing to make the bold moves.
“In the SR newsroom, we MUST understand and then embrace the notion that print is no longer our primary focus. As advanced as we are in the digital delivery of news (and this conference confirms for me that we are ahead of the industry curve, as innovative and progressive as any newsroom ), we are still too print focused.
“We need to devote FEWER resources to print. Our editors need to spend far less time worrying about print. And all of us need to be focusing on how to improve and expand the scope and quality of our digital news and information (and that includes radio).
“This is a huge cultural leap. The push back will be extreme. Work schedules will have to change. Skills will have to be refined or re-taught or learned for the first time. Many of us will have to fundamentally question what we do, why we do it and how it must be done differently.
“The editors who push this cultural change forward will not earn many friends in the newsroom. I think that understanding has been sobering for all of us.
“My hope is that our journalists will understand that we must change our practices, while holding true to our news values.
“That will be our only chance and only hope.”
Smith returned from the conference to Spokane and called a staff meeting to underscore the urgency of transformation as the only way the newsroom could fend off job cuts. In the ensuing two months, the newsroom has developed a reorganization plan that would make the organization more online-centric. (I hope to learn more about the reorganization plan next week.) Smith said it was unclear whether that would be implemented with the smaller staff.
Given his commitment to avoiding job losses, I asked Smith whether the idea that his departure (his replacement will come from within) would spare others layoffs was a factor. Smith acknowledged that his job might be equivalent to three reporting positions but said it did not affect his decision. “If I thought there was good reason to stay, I would have. I decided there’s no good reason.”
Update: Late Thursday afternoon, Carla Savalli, assistant managing editor, resigned, according to The Spokesman-Review newsroom blog. Savalli, seen by many as a future editor of the Spokesman, is a Spokane native who has overseen many of the newsroom’s efforts to bring news to new platforms, including the launch of radio programming earlier this year. Savalli wrote “The Future of the Newsroom,” which explored challenges and opportunities for journalism in the digital age.
Update: Roger Plothow, editor and publisher, Post Register, Idaho Falls, commenting on Romenesko:
“As the tumult in the newspaper business deepens, it’s becoming increasingly popular for journalists—particularly those, like me, who participated in the comparative heydays—to express their objections to job cuts and reduced spending by resigning their positions.
“The respected editor of the Spokane Spokesman-Review, Steve Smith, is the latest. While I understand this inclination—I’ve thought about falling on my sword from time to time myself—it’s an impulse we should resist. Print/online journalism has never needed passionate, experienced, committed and intelligent journalists more than now.”
More of Plothow’s letter here.
By Michele McLellan, 10/02/08 at 11:30 am
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