Business here stinks, downtown is a ghost town, the city's population flight couldn't be stopped if the mayor were giving away iPods, and now, it seems, The Buffalo News is shriveling up too.
Buffalo's only major newspaper-which is read in 10 counties-isn't in danger of folding, but recent events may have us soon wondering if its best days as a publication of importance are already far behind it.
For readers, the most noticeable changes will come as The News closes two of its three suburban bureaus to relocate them downtown and will probably cut its evening editions. Sure, the local coverage won't disappear, but The News is the only game in town. How is it supposed to be the neighborhood watchdog when it isn't even in the neighborhood? And if the evening editions are cut, Western New Yorkers have no choice but to turn on Channel 7 at 5 o'clock for the latest news. Picking up the paper on the way home from work isn't even an option.
Go ahead, Buffalo News, complain about dwindling readership when you are shooting yourself in the foot.
The paper is also in the middle of a hush-hush labor dispute with its members of the Buffalo newspaper union. Employees at The News are fighting for their health benefits, but the publisher is trying to strip them away so Warren Buffett, Nebraska billionaire and The News's owner, can save a few pennies while keeping annual pay raises at only two percent. I wouldn't be surprised if the paper is having trouble attracting and retaining top-notch journalists when the union hasn't had a contract since last July.
Meanwhile, The News' Web site is awful (it's apparently not even run by The News itself), its coverage of several critical city issues like the downtown casino has been less than sub-par, and there doesn't seem to be any turnaround in sight. None of this has been reported in the pages of The Buffalo News itself, but that's another problem entirely. What makes me nauseous is the trend at The News to make decisions based on profits and not the quality of the paper.
Much of what I've read about what's going on at The News comes from a recent article by UB professor Bruce Jackson on his Web site, The Buffalo Report. Jackson isn't entirely accurate (he says there are also going to be layoffs at The News, but nowhere is that confirmed) and at times he exaggerates (speculating about the future sale of the paper based on an anonymous source), but Jackson is not the first source I've heard bemoan what is happening. I'll admit to partially regurgitating Jackson's article, but I believe he has several tremendous points.
"So what?" you might ask. "It's just The Buffalo News." But that's exactly the point. Buffalo has one major newspaper, one voice in print, one eye to watch out for breaking news, issues that matter, wrongs that need to be rectified-and if The Buffalo News falters, what's the second line of defense?
Some argue The News is hardly a very good first line of defense, and I would agree. Many of their "hard-hitting" articles barely bring anything new to the discussion, and as a watchdog, I don't see The News having an effect on much.
If The Buffalo News wants to point to plummeting circulation numbers as the source of its woes, I point to Jay Smith, chairman of the Newspaper Association of America, who has said the circulation numbers are blown way out of proportion. Circulation is undoubtedly down, but I agree with Smith that readership, with the help of the Internet, is arguably up. And don't forget that circulation doesn't take into account a five-family household with one subscription, or the newspaper that gets left in the Student Union and read by 12 people.
But more importantly, no matter how low readership is, that doesn't absolve The News of its responsibility to put out the best damn paper it can. Newspapers aren't dead, but Buffalo's is acting like it has no choice but to roll over.
The umbrella problem here lies with today's biggest media culprit: infotainment and all the crap that's clogging up our airwaves and print media in the form of both liberal and conservative suits posing as newsmakers. Businessmen like Warren Buffett who will do anything to cut a profit over improving the paper to build a profit, they've been around a long time, but today's media culture only makes it worse. I feel bad for the journalists at The News who are still trying to make a difference here.
Buffalo deserves a comeback. It deserves a better newspaper.
Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Messina, from the RMBERS' Instagram page
