My hometown newspaper is dying a slow death, and it’s pretty painful to watch.
The State Journal-Register will be losing 10 copy editors soon. The paper’s corporate owner, GateHouse Media, plans to consolidate copy editing for some papers at an office in Downers Grove, a suburb of Chicago.
I’m looking forward to copy editors in Downers Grove trying to grasp that the arts center in Springfield, Illinois is spelled Hoogland or trying to understand a local address like 801 North Grand Avenue West.
The copy editing idiocy was announced about the same time that rumors circulated of new layoffs on the editorial side of the paper. The upshot is that fewer people will be writing local news, and the local news stories will be edited a couple hundred miles away.
Unbelievable.
I realize that the situation facing The State Journal-Register is the same one facing papers across the country. But that realization doesn’t make it easier to watch this paper slowly die.
The newspaper industry is scrambling to figure out how to continue making a profit as its former audience moves away from buying physical newspapers every day. One day somebody is going to figure out how to turn a profit by gathering and distributing news in the online age.
Until that day breaks, people in cities all over America will experience what I’m seeing now, the slow and painful death of their local daily newspaper.
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