I had the day off today, but with all the tweets coming out of an Express-News staff meeting this morning, it almost felt like I was there.
Executives from Hearst Corp., which owns the San Antonio Express-News, met with staff and answered questions about the future of the paper. Here’s an outline of what was said, courtesy of Storify:
Swartz on industry lay offs: It’s been tough. “The human toll is bad.”Swartz: Hearst sold the Skiff so it could stop “upping the ante” with Apple. Investing in e-readers was smart but times changed.Steve Swartz addressing the Express-News newsroom. http://twitpic.com/23158y
But Swartz added that “tablets are going to get cooler and cooler.”
Waiting for fellow gadget-geek @jbaugh to get off the damn phone so we can talk about this: http://bit.ly/74RdqLHere’s the press release about Sprint and the Skiff touchscreen e-reader: http://bit.ly/4KFRmd. No details on price.Checking out the Skiff — Hearst’s touchscreen, 3G and Wi-Fi enabled e-reader: http://bit.ly/4Ieuwa. Gadget geeks rejoice?Starting my morning routine at Twin Sisters Cafe downtown — where even the chorizo and egg tacos taste healthy.Cool video interview with @Propublica’s Paul Steiger: Newspapers are department stores; Propublica is a boutique: http://bit.ly/4R3vgI
Dead by Mistake, a series of investigative stories about medical errors published by dozens of journalists at newspapers and television stations owned by Hearst Corp., now has a YouTube channel.
The videos feature heartrending interviews with family members of victims, hammering home the impact of preventable mistakes at hospitals across the country.
The YouTube channel is another way to connect with people — the series’ homepage also offers links to Twitter and Facebook to open up a dialogue with readers.
Swartz: Newspapers need to do more to innovate. “Is Steve Jobs the only innovative person in this country?”Swartz to newsroom: “Do you have a blog? … It’s more work but it’s also another outlet for our creativity.”Swartz is a big fan of social media.Swartz on why we increased subscription rates: In the past “we’ve been pricing our paper for people who didn’t want it.”Swartz likes the NY Times idea of “metering” online content.
A team of journalists working for Hearst-owned newspapers and television stations across the country have spent months investigating the little-known but deadly problem of medical errors in the United States. The stories reveal that more people die every year from medical mistakes than car accidents.
At the San Antonio Express-News, Database Editor Kelly Guckian analyzed medical data and Projects Writer Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje wrote this story:
Elbert Eugene “Gene” Riggs Jr. went into Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio for a stomachache.
He ended up dying there — after a feeding tube was inserted into his right lung.
Editor-At-Large Phil Bronstein explains how the project was done:
The idea for the story first came in an informal discussion among reporters and editors from several papers; we were looking at topics to investigate that would have a significant impact on people’s lives. We decided that focusing on the plague of fatal but preventable hospital errors would be a public service.
Our team, which during the course of the project involved over 35 people – and an entire class of graduate journalism students at Columbia University, read thousands of pages of documents, disciplinary files, lawsuits, governmental, medical and other public and private reports.
I like how this kind of enterprise journalism relies on reams of public records to shed light on a tragic problem many people don’t know much about. Hearst also set up a Web site for the stories that includes links to Facebook and Twitter accounts, which is a nice way to open up a dialogue with readers.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the sister-paper of the Hearst-owned San Antonio Express-News, where I work, is going up for sale after hemorrhaging money for years:
The Seattle P-I is being put up for sale, and if after 60 days it has not sold, it will either be turned into a Web-only publication or discontinued entirely.
“One thing is clear: at the end of the sale process, we do not see ourselves publishing in print,” said Steven Swartz, president of the Hearst Corp.’s newspaper division. …
P-I employees were silent as they listened to the announcement, which lasted about 10 minutes. Some of them shed tears. Others held up cell phones or voice recorders in press-conference fashion.
Editorial Cartoonist David Horsey was nearly speechless.
“This is awful, awful, awful,” he said afterward. “I was just standing there looking around at all these people I love to work with. I don’t want this to happen to me or them.”
He said that he’s been watching the news about the newspaper troubles nationwide, but that doesn’t make it any easier to understand the business reasons behind the decision.
“You realize you’re part of a huge implosion of the newspaper industry,” he said.
Both the P-I and the Seattle Times have produced outstanding watchdog journalism, which makes this news especially disheartening. Believe it or not, there are those of us in the newspaper industry who believe we need to stay away from schlocky stories about Britany Spears, and try to give readers gripping narratives and compelling investigative pieces that truly make a difference.
The P-I publishes lots of enterprising journalism — and they do it well. Last month, Andrew Schneider of the P-I wrote an interesting series of investigative stories about a topic I’ve never heard of: “Honey Laundering.”
A far cry from the innocent image of Winnie the Pooh with a paw stuck in the honey pot, the international honey trade has become increasingly rife with crime and intrigue.
In the U.S., where bee colonies are dying off and demand for imported honey is soaring, traders of the thick amber liquid are resorting to elaborate schemes to dodge tariffs and health safeguards in order to dump cheap honey on the market, a five-month Seattle P-I investigation has found.
The business is plagued by foreign hucksters and shady importers who rip off conscientious U.S. packers with honey diluted with sugar water or corn syrup — or worse, tainted with pesticides or antibiotics.
These are the kinds of interesting, public-service stories that we risk losing when a newspaper dies. But the sale of the P-I also raises the question whether our salvation lies in watchdog journalism. It apparently couldn’t save the P-I.
Or maybe the P-I’s strong history of investigative journalism helped staunch the bleeding and keep the paper alive. I don’t know.
It’s possible the P-I will reduce its staff and migrate all its content to the Web. Maybe in an Internet-savvy city like Seattle, that operation will prosper. Maybe in a few months the P-I will reinvent itself and show other newspapers that going digital is possible.
But those are a lot of maybes. Speaking as an avid newspaper reader who believes journalism, when it’s done right, is a public service, this is a sad day.
