Two interesting postings from journalists, expressing outrage at the destructive effects of corporate consolidation in the newspaper industry:

1. Alan Mutter, media blogger at Reflections of a Newsosaur, describes the slashing of staff, infrastructure, institutional memory and community connection at the San Mateo County Times under the management of Northern California newspaper oligopolist MediaNews. His posting, "A paper's sad decline in debt's grip," reminds us that the County Times was sold to MediaNews in 1996, when it had nearly 50 employees. Now its staff hovers somewhere around 10, though MediaNews contends that it's really higher than that because the company's got regional reporters and copy editors scattered across the region. He also points out that even though some papers, like the County Times, have seen their circulation numbers plunge, MediaNews, which specializes in cutting staff costs by eliminating editorial "redundancies" from newsroom to newsroom, exceeds the circulation of the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times combined.
2. Joe Torres from the media-policy organization Free Press writes in "Journalists Must Speak Up," at CommonDreams.org, that minority journalists, who had made uneven but real progress for decades in approaching parity in representation in newsrooms, are now losing ground, as more have left the business as a result of layoffs and consolidation than have entered. This, Torres writes, is an important public policy issue that has real consequences for the quality of coverage in increasingly diverse American communities. He writes:

Runaway media consolidation is the story behind the attack on quality journalism and the clear-cutting of our newsrooms. But you rarely read — and then, only inside the business pages — about media policymaking in the newspaper or hear about it on TV. ... Journalists and journalism groups must add their voices to the media ownership debate, just as they have spoken out strongly in favor of free speech issues and a shield law. Both issues impact the practice of journalism. If journalists do not speak out, their corporate bosses will be more than happy to fill that void.

It is indeed difficult to diagnose the woes of the newspaper industry in particular when technological and lifestyle changes overlap with an economic downturn and a trend toward massive consolidation. What is clear is that more honest and in-depth reporting needs to be done on this topic to sort out the lines of responsibility -- and propose possible solutions to the crisis.