Today the New York Times reports on Washington bureau cutbacks by major media corporations. They offer a litany of the usual reasons, including media mergers and financial reversals. The article says that major newspapers are becoming more local (meaning that even big metro dailies with bureaus are focusing on their local congressmen), but they are still cutting back.
The Times piece echoes a current AJR story, Endangered Species. (Hat tip to Maurreen Skowran for that link.) This piece details which Washington bureaus have made cuts or even complete shutdowns (even since the election), including Copley and Newhouse.
I spent the 1980s in Washington reporting local news for hometown papers with several organizations, including States News Service — and found it a powerful and meaningful experience. Sadly, now, States News is gone. In 2004 its founder and driving force for decades, Leland Schwartz, was convicted for failure to pay withholding and corporate taxes.
Sometimes we were the only journalists covering congressmen from Iowa, South Dakota, Illinois, and elsewhere. Some of those politicians such as HHS Secretary designate Tom Daschle, have become important national figures. The AJR piece also laments the loss of States News.
States News struggled to make its business model work, but the idea was sound: people back home in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, need to know what their representative — and the dairy industry — are doing. Businesses in Decatur, Ill., need to know about the lobbying actions of Archer Daniels Midland, one of the region’s largest companies. The AJR story cites the Pulitzer won by Copley’s San Diego team for breaking the story of a corrupt congressman.
Neither the Times nor the AJR stories, however, suggested that “local angle” Washington reporting is a perfect opportunity for small, focused Web 2.0 journalism organizations that publish online, make use of the many new data tools available, and keep their overhead low. Politicker.com is going the other way, opening regional “bureaus” in state capitals, and is now in 17 states by my count. However, Politicker does not appear to be drilling down into local congressmen and regional industry issues. (See update below)
So, unless I’m missing something, there is a major opportunity here.
With the current D.C. bureau cutbacks, we’re about to have many experienced Washington journalists looking for work — exactly when the banking industry is nearly being nationalized, environmental regulations are likely to be tightened, and an activist Democratic Party majority comes into power.
Main Street and Wall Street may be hurting, but I am guessing that 2009 could be a growth year for Web 2.0-savvy journalists on K Street.
UPDATE Dec. 19: After this post was published, two readers told me about recent cuts at Politicker. According to Fishbowl DC, Gawker, and the Colorado Independent, 12 of the 17 state bureaus are being shut down.
This does not negate my thesis but reinforces it. Politics is fun and games, like sports, and is fun to watch, but it recedes in people’s interest after elections. Mindshare is down and will be until the next election cycle.
But government, regulators, and congressmen grind away with all the taxpayers’ money. That’s when watchdogs are even more important, and why there may be opportunities.
