As McClatchy cuts reporters, local politicians lose a headache—and communities lose a watchdog.
Now that the smoke is clearing from the hedge-fund-inspired cuts at McClatchy newspapers, we’re getting a clearer picture of its “news” strategy across 30 newsrooms from California to Florida. The direction is stark: fewer reporters, fewer local voices and, especially, fewer journalists of color in communities that need their perspectives and experiences in the newsroom.
At the same time, McClatchy’s newspapers risk becoming little more than advertising platforms—billboards for restaurants, retailers and other businesses—while the journalism that once made them essential to their communities is steadily stripped away.
The damage reaches well beyond the newsroom. When newspapers no longer have the reporters, time or resources to cover city councils, school boards and other public bodies, government gets less scrutiny. Important decisions receive less attention. And residents lose one of the few institutions equipped to ask public officials the questions they would rather not answer.
That hurts the communities the newspapers are supposed to be serving.
And let’s be blunt: Many local politicians will welcome the cuts. They would much rather have their government public-information officers paint a rosy picture of their decisions than have reporters asking tough questions about how taxpayer money is being spent, which priorities are being funded and whether those decisions actually serve the public.
Fewer reporters means fewer questions, fewer independent stories and less accountability.
This is not merely a business decision about how to run a newspaper. It is a decision about what a newspaper is for. A newspaper should do more than sell advertising. It should tell people what is happening in their communities, amplify voices that might otherwise be ignored and scrutinize those who exercise public power.
When that journalism disappears, so does much of the newspaper’s civic purpose. The name may remain on the masthead, but the institution can become something fundamentally different: a business built around selling consumers to advertisers rather than informing citizens.
In a previous Substack column, I argued that the hedge fund that now owns McClatchy has forfeited the right to use the McClatchy family name. That won’t change, of course, because Chatham Asset Management bought the name out of bankruptcy. But they should have the decency not to disgrace the McClatchy journalism that is more than 150 years old.
At what point does a newspaper stop being a newspaper—not because the presses stop running, but because the journalism has been stripped away?
Fortunately, California has several feisty nonprofit news organizations working to fill the vacuum left by shrinking newsrooms. They’re putting reporters on the streets, showing up at government meetings and doing the independent journalism that communities cannot afford to lose.
So here’s my advice: donate to these news organizations. Put your money behind reporters who are still doing the work. Every dollar can help put another reporter in a newsroom, another notebook at a government meeting and another watchdog on the street.
If you want local journalism to survive, don’t just complain when the reporters disappear. Help pay to keep them there.
I believe local journalism will help our communities, which is why I donate to the nonprofit new sites that are filling the news vacuum. Please join me.
