The Ghost of Newsrooms Past

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Staffing cuts and declining circulation are hitting leading newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Chicago Tribune. "If newspapers take the shortsighted, short-term approach to tighter budgets by whittling away at investigative reporting, others outside the industry - such as blogs and radio - likely will take up the slack, and newspapers' decline will accelerate," writes Editor and Publisher editor Steve Outing. Newsrooms "have become the morgues they so closely resemble, filled with ghosts of the departed and those who await the next ax to fall," writes Kathleen Parker. "But to those in the trenches, cutting staff is exactly the wrong solution, more like a self-inflicted wound trending toward suicide than a remedy. By cutting newsroom staffs, the corporate suits are reducing the likelihood that papers can do what makes them necessary."