No. 4 - Consequences of consolidation

I was surprised when I heard that the Post-Bulletin newspaper was no longer being printed in Rochester, and how it seemed feasible for that to be the case. I didn’t give too much thought to it though. It was a couple weeks later when from newsroom conversation I heard that the paper in LaCrosse, Wisconsin was moving the printing of the paper to Madison, Wisconsin that I gave it more thought and I heard what others in the newsroom thought about it too.

At the daily stand-up meeting one of the editors brought up the news of the shifting of where the LaCrosse paper prints its paper to point out what other local papers were also consolidating their printing process. At the time, stricter deadlines for turning in stories were being placed on reporters as the time that stories needed to be turned into the page designers was being pushed further and further away from the time the paper would actually go to press. Eventually one of the deadlines for a weekend section of the paper was moved 36 hours ahead of printing, drastically different from what was expected.

The editors were touching base with everyone at the meeting to explain why deadlines were being moved up, and they wanted to point out other papers that were going through the same thing. While it makes sense now, I was not thinking of it as a way of keeping papers running in a modern market by cutting production costs. One of the other reporters brought up this fact, and that was when it all clicked. This was an obvious way to cut production costs, and something that has been discussed for much longer than I was aware of.

How does this all affect the news coverage that a paper is able to provide?

While the section of the paper that had to be turned in 36 hours ahead of printing consisted of soft news and evergreen news, hard news was also facing an earlier deadline. One of the biggest problems that has played out because of the earlier deadlines is that sporting events often times won’t finish until hours after deadline, which means they miss being printed in the paper, something the news room had to answer a lot of calls over and take time to explain the consequences of the new changes.

In addition to sports there are probably many areas of news that would also be affected by the new deadlines and even some news that would have been previously able to cover that it is no longer feasible to get out before deadline.

While it is difficult to adjust to the changes of consolidating printing – and not just for the newsroom standpoint – it is better than having to combine with another paper, as that would most likely mean a reduction in the total amount of local coverage that the community receives.