Clashes at legacy newspapers spark concerns about wider industry

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• Geoff Bennett:

  This week has brought fresh questions about the futures of some of the country's most storied newspapers.

  The Baltimore Sun has a new owner, but his political background has sparked concerns about what the 187-year-old newspaper could become. And staffers at The Los Angeles Times walked off the job today to protest planned layoffs. That's after its top editor stepped down following reported tensions with the paper's billionaire owner.

  Ann Marie Lipinski is a former editor at The Chicago Tribune. She's now the curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

  Thanks so much for being with us.

  Ann Marie Lipinski, Nieman Foundation for Journalism: My pleasure.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So, the new Baltimore Sun owner, David D. Smith, I think it's fair to say, raised eyebrows at his initial staff meeting, where he reportedly insulted the journalism that's being produced by the paper and told the staffers to focus on profit.

  Is this type of ownership model a sustainable one for newspapers moving forward, where the super wealthy swoop in and buy them up?

• Ann Marie Lipinski:

  No.

  Billionaire owners do not equal a business strategy. There have been a number of them in the last decade or so, some of whom have had very good intentions, and, in some cases, there has been some success. But this idea that your success in one realm will translate to a success in another, in this case, newspaper publishing, is not axiomatic.

  And I think, from all accounts, it was a rough start between Mr. Smith and the newsroom. He talked about not having read the paper hardly at all and had a lot of criticisms, not just of the paper, but of the community. And I think that's a rocky place to start.

  And there wasn't a lot of detail about what else, except, let's make money and change, that the newsroom could really sink their teeth into. I think it's — the mission is not clear.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And David Smith is also executive chair of Sinclair Broadcasting, which has drawn criticism for injecting conservative and right-wing commentary into its local news broadcasts that owns over 200 local TV stations.

  What concerns do you have about how that might impact The Sun's journalism moving forward?

• Ann Marie Lipinski:

  I think we have examples historically where newspaper owners had political agendas.

  I think the question is, where do those play out? Do they play out on the editorial page, where we come to expect political endorsements and political campaigns, as it were, played out by owners and publishers? And I think that's a — that's something we're accustomed to.

  Where it gets really dangerous and interferes with the reporting obligations of a newspaper is when you see that agenda creep in to the news. And we have certainly seen that. You know, we have seen national campaigns roll out at Sinclair, for instance, where all of the markets or many of the markets were required to read these identical statements about fake news, which effectively sounded like an attack on the press that very much mimicked the one that President Trump was voicing at the time.

  So I think that's — there are differences. You can play out a political agenda or have an agenda around issues in the community on the editorial page. Columnists do that. Where it really becomes a problem and where a community is not served is when that plays out in the news columns.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Let's talk about The L.A. Times, because we mentioned that walkout today. It's the first work stoppage in that paper's 143-year history.

  What's the impact on the landscape of news in Los Angeles and the surrounding region?

• Ann Marie Lipinski:

  The walkout is an interesting strategy.

  But I guess my question is, who's paying attention to that? Those of us in the media are paying attention to it. I hope that there is a sustained conversation with the community, though. We have mounting data that show us that when newspapers are diminished or closed in communities, there's an increase in corruption, for instance, violations like pollution violations, EEOC violations.

  I wish that we could pivot and have that conversation when newsrooms are under attack or when we have shrinking resources, because that's the real cost. Yes, there are jobs — there are journalists who pay a price and lose their jobs, but that's true in a lot of companies and a lot of industries.

  The outsized impact here really is on what happens in communities, and we need the support of communities to support these institutions.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Ann Marie, as much as it pains me to say this, the story of print media is in so many ways a story of decline.

  "Sports Illustrated," which was once considered the standard of sports journalism today, announced they're going to lay off most of their staff. You work in this space. Is there anything that is working? What's the story of reinvention for print media? Is it the nonprofit model that Evan Smith is championing with The Texas Tribune?

• Ann Marie Lipinski:

  The Texas Tribune is a good example. It's had some financial challenges, but they have done incredible work on a different model.

  We have seen in the past handful of months this initiative called Press Forward, which is $500 million being committed across, I think, 22 donors, foundations, and individuals to support a local news initiative in markets across the country. We have a lot of people living in news deserts now in this country, and this is an effort to try to return local news to a lot of those communities, strengthen it in places where there are maybe fledgling efforts.

  Baltimore is another good example of that. The Baltimore Banner, if The Baltimore Sun is disappointing you, you should be supporting this new effort, which is a start-up which is being run in part by a lot of alumni from The Baltimore Sun.

  Look, in my perfect world, they both thrive, but if one model isn't working, we have to be experimenting with some others, and a lot of those are not-for-profit models.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Ann Marie Lipinski is the curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

  A real pleasure to speak with you. Thank you for joining us this evening.

• Ann Marie Lipinski:

  Thank you, Geoff.