Where the American Newsroom Went
Twenty years after the first wave of layoffs, the survivors of three midsize metro papers tell what was lost and what, in places, is coming back.
There is a particular sound a copy desk used to make at nine in the evening, three hours from the first edition. It was the sound of a room of people who had done a thing many times before, knew it was important, and were trying not to make it feel like a crisis. I have not heard that sound in eleven years.
Birmingham, 2009
The first round of cuts at the Birmingham News came in March of that year.
Cleveland, 2013
By the time the Plain Dealer announced its move to a three-day-a-week print schedule, the language for what was happening had stabilized.
Atlanta, 2024
And then there is the slow return. Not at the scale of what was lost — that scale is gone for good — but in pockets, and in forms that, twenty years ago, would not have been recognized as newspapers at all.
Editor-in-Chief of Pulse Chronicles. Twenty years reporting on American politics and the South.
More from The Chronicles
The Port That Quietly Outgrew Los Angeles
Savannah is now the third-busiest container port in the United States. The state spent thirty years making sure of it.
The Last Video Store in Decatur
Vision Video has outlasted the format, the chain stores, and three landlords. It will not outlast its lease.
Editor's Letter: The Last Monthly Issue
Richard E. Spoon's final letter to readers, written six months before his death.