Chapter 13

"What's the plan for tomorrow?" Carrie asked.

I actually grimaced.

"What?" she wondered. "Do you have Christmas tradition like a root canal or something?"

"Well, kind of," I replied. "Newspapers run 365 days a year. So people have to work on Christmas, New Year's, Fourth of July, Easter. I try to make sure the staff is only bare bones but I have to have people there. When I got here no salaried person worked the holidays. If you were a manager you were off. They would appoint some poor hourly worker to run the whole shebang and they would stay home with their families.

"I changed that way of thinking pretty quickly," I continued. "We have a rotation so no hourly worker is scheduled for more than 1 holiday unless they switch. I have a couple of people who don't mind working. But I also make sure that every manager works a holiday. Christmas is mine because I knew the kids would be with Kelly and her folks."

"I thought it was supposed to be good to be king," Carrie laughed. "Yet you delve into the manure like the peons. Things like that are probably why people speak highly of you."

"Except the managers and those with 'seniority' who never used to work holidays," I replied. "Those people do not speak highly of me at all. I tried to explain to them that we are not unionized and there is no seniority. Should layoffs come — and it is likely they will in the next year or so because the whole industry is dying — I will start with the least productive regardless of years of service. There will be much hew and cry come next budget cycle because I'm positive my boss is going to tell me to get rid of about 10-15 percent of my staff — or at least 10-15 percent of the budget for that staff."

"Ouch!" Carrie said. "Is it really that bad?"

"Probably worse," I replied. "The highest fixed costs at a newspaper — outside of salary and benefits — is the cost of newsprint. It is outrageously expensive and it shows no sign of decreasing any time soon. Ink is also expensive and the cost of maintaining two presses is cumbersome. The cost of maintaining an Internet connection and a server is peanuts compared to those costs. But no one is going to pay $150 a year to read a Web site — or if they are we certainly can't find them.

"Factor in 24-hour news and a constant barrage of information from other sources and newspapers may be facing their last days unless we can change and change quickly. Most of it is our own arrogance. We, as an industry, believed that we were essential to daily life in America. We ignored the data that suggested otherwise and continued to do what we did for 20 more years.

"When advertisers started finding cheaper ways to reach the consumer — because as much as I hate to confess it, without advertising revenue a newspaper doesn't work — we really panicked. But for many people it was too late. Again, I blame our arrogance. The managers of the 1970s and 1980s became the journalism professors of the 1990s. They were the Watergate generation in which a newspaper brought down a sitting president. That skewed their sense of worth and many newspapers, even small ones like this one, thought their main purpose was to fight corruption and keep the scoundrels at bay.

"The J-schools produced a generation of writers just like them, so that became the norm. Newspapers ignored the fact that most of the readers — unless you're in a high-density urban area — don't give a shit about that sort of thing. They cared more about their grandson's name being spelled right on the Sports page and that cousin Vera's wedding announcement had the right photograph with it.

"We we let things like that slide. We began to substitute our judgment for the readers. We would spend hours upon hours deciding not what the reader wanted to know but what they should know. We would drop a local feature — or edit the hell out it — to get in a story on genocide in Rwanda. The genocide in Rwanda is important news — if you're an ethnic minority in Rwanda. But to the people of small-town America, it's filler. As caring and as generous a people as we are, we really don't want 15 inches of copy on that.

"Really, and this sounds bad and I don't mean it that way. It is just a fact. But really, we don't really want 15 inches on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan unless it directly affects us locally. If a local soldier — Martha who works at the Quick Stop's son, maybe — is injured or killed we want as much as you can give us. If some poor kid from Outer Slobovia, West Virginia, is killed we can do with a paragraph or two.

"That's probably the main thing I've tried to get across here. The news people want to read is not necessary the type of stories journalists — and I use that word as a pejorative — want to write. Most of these people feel that it is beneath them to cover a school board meeting or a farmer's market opening — conveniently forgetting that news from venues like that is going to have far more effect on the readers' lives than what happens in Washington, D.C., or even the state capital."

Carrie was leaning forward with interest during my dissertation. At least I hoped it was interest. She wouldn't have been the first person to fall asleep on me while I discussion my profession.

"What you're saying makes sense to me," she said. "I don't read the paper very often. When I did it was mostly to catch up on local things. If I wanted to know what was happening in the state, nation or world I had other places to find it."

"More up-to-date information than a newspaper could provide," I put in.

"Absolutely," she agreed. "But I suppose you're right about that, too. I don't really care enough to read a long story — or even to watch a full TV news segment on the war or the economy or, really, on much of anything. When the network news or CNN starts droning on about something like that, I turn the channel. I hadn't really thought of it that way before. Wow, it doesn't make me sound like a very good person."

"It's not that at all," I said. "You know having a vast amount of information about what's happening in Slovenia isn't going to affect that situation in the slightest. Look at what happens in most of those places. There is political or social unrest that is put down harshly. The word gets out and the world gasps. Then the world yawns and moves on the next crisis. But having the knowledge that your local school board is planning to cut art and music from the curriculum has a higher chance of affecting you. The knowledge that your city council is planning to jack up the price of parking affects you. The knowledge that local farmers have a surplus of tomatoes or corn or beets affects you.

"They say all politics is local and I agree," I concluded. "But all news is local, too. Most people get their names in the paper when they are born, when they get married and when the die. It's the least we can do to make sure we spell it the right way and include the right information during those three times."

Carrie was staring off into space. I figured she was wondering how her story had played out in the press.

"You know, 10 days ago I had no interest in how a newspaper ran and I probably wouldn't have cared if they all went out of business," she said. "I mean, I like the comics and I read the advice columns for a chuckle now and then. Now I'd like to know more about them. Do you think I could come into your office with you tomorrow?"

"Uh, it's sort of like watching sausage being made," I replied. "The less you know the better. It's boring as hell and it will be more boring tomorrow. There are only a few nuts and bolts things I'll be doing — looking for stories that might be of interest, proof reading obituaries. It's not going to be an exciting day."

"I'll bring a book in case I get bored," she said. "But I think it would be interesting. Kasey talks about your office like it's where all information comes to be doled out to the masses."

"Which just shows without a shadow of a doubt that Kasey is full of shit," I replied.

I dawdled around the house and finished wrapping the Christmas loot while Carrie was helping at Kelly's house.

I do not believe in providing the necessities of life in lieu of Christmas presents. Kasey might wind up with something essential in her Christmas stocking, just as Mark might find crayons or glue in his.

But to my mind, Christmas presents are for purchasing or making something the other person would dearly like to have but is either unable or unwilling to purchase for themselves.

There are no clothes for Christmas at my house. It is my responsibility to provide clothing, food and shelter to my children at all times. There have been times where Kasey has received something ridiculously expensive in terms of clothing but for the most part I keep the gifts to something other than things I should be providing anyway.

This year, because Kasey was getting ready to head to college in the next 9 months, I tried to focus on things we could do together.