I’ve been watching the reaction to resignation of Steve Smith, the pioneering editor of the Spokane Spokesman-Review. The S-R is the little paper that could and did: a small-market daily that innovated like mad when it came to the web. Blogging, webcasting news meetings, video…you name it, they have often been out in front and they have stuck with it.
Smith announced his resignation after having to tell his newsroom that 21 people were being laid-off. In the words of Colin Mulvany: “He said he simply had had enough.” (Colin’s post about the layoffs is well worth reading.)
In an interview, Steve said this:
The journalism that’s important to me is no longer possible…It is no longer my job or our job to save newspapers. Our job is to save journalism and the values that underlie newspaper journalism.
Since then there have been two reactions. One has been an outpouring of sympathy for one of the genuine newsroom leaders in U.S. journalism. The other has been some folks questioning him for leaving.
Jim Romenesko quoted Roger Polthow, editor and publisher of the Idaho Falls Post Register:
While I understand this inclination — I’ve thought about falling on my sword from time to time myself — it’s an impulse we should resist. Print/online journalism has never needed passionate, experienced, committed and intelligent journalists more than now. …Walking away makes a brief impact but robs our newspapers of the very talent we need most.
And Kirk LaPointe, m-e of the Vancouver Sun, weighed in with:
What bothers me is that there are precious few terrific leaders in our business. Better they stay and make the best of difficult circumstances, help their organizations cope, reassure those staying that they can find new ways to work, and advise their bosses of the best course of action when decisions need to be made.
To me, it seems that both missed the essential point of what Steve was saying: “The journalism that’s important to me is no longer possible.” How do you make the best of difficult circumstances, when those circumstances no longer allow you to do the job? What’s the point for passionate, experienced journalists who are so constrained by the current financial realities of the newspaper that they feel the journalism can’t be done? Is it a matter of making sure the last one out turns out the lights with a sense of integrity?
The newspaper may be finished with Steve, but I suspect journalism isn’t, and the contribution he stands to make (and has already made) to the craft is of greater value than any contribution he could have made to a single, deeply-troubled application of the craft.
Both Ron Polthow and Kirk LaPointe (I don’t know Polthrow; I admire Kirk for what he has achieved as a journalist, and for his enthusiasm for taking newspapering into a new age) appear to prize loyalty to title over the potential for the Steve Smiths (and Adrian Holovatys and Dave Cohns and many others) to make lasting and significant contributions to journalism, in ways that are unlikely related to newspapering as we know it.
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Tags: journalism, layoffs, newspapers
