BACK BAY — “Local journalism is in peril,” writes Dr. Robert McNab, a professor at Old Dominion University and director of the Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy, in the State of the Region report that came out this month. Concur, doc.
The new report is getting a couple headlines for tackling how the region dealt with and – fingers crossed – is recovering from the novel coronavirus pandemic, and it shines a welcome spotlight on our important tourism industry. Kudos.
But the State of the Region report also talks about the decline of newsgathering in these parts, which is probably something you know if you’re reading this paper. On account I’ve kept an obsessive tally of the ongoing gutting of The Virginian-Pilot staff over the past couple years. And here I am, banging on that drum again.
So I used to work at The Pilot, and I should note I’m one of the folks who was interviewed for the report. The Independent News gets a mention. I proudly will send Mom a link, then call her so I can walk her through turning the computer on. And then I will have to explain why ODU, of all the things I told them earlier this year, quoted part of a column in which I made a marijuana joke.
Come on, ODU. I got kids.
I’ll relay a couple of highlights from the report section cheerfully called “Bad News: The Decline of Local Journalism.” A core finding is: “The breadth and depth of local coverage in our region’s newspapers has shrunk dramatically in the past two decades, but no similarly comprehensive, critical source of news and information has emerged to fill the gap.”
So ad revenue has cratered and consolidation has gobbled up local papers such as The Pilot into chains such as Tribune, which then cut staff and sell off property and so forth. When I worked at The Pilot many years ago, the newsroom had a couple hundred people covering South Hampton Roads and a full team covering Virginia Beach. We even had a Beach bureau at Town Center, right next door to the city’s sexiest Taco Bell.
Pro tip: Fire Sauce rules.
Now the gutting of The Pilot – which no longer controls its own printing press and has a skeleton crew of perhaps a couple dozen people covering all of Hampton Roads between The Pilot and the Daily Press – means the public knows little of what is actually going on with its cities.
The Pilot has good folks left — Stacy Parker remains a rock star covering the Beach. But The Pilot is being ravaged by industry standard stuff such as “dramatic cost cutting through staff layoffs and buyouts, selling off real estate assets such as newsrooms and printing plants and wringing out profits wherever it can,” as the report notes.
“Three years ago, we had two daily papers,” the report says. “Now we essentially have one that covers a wider region with a smaller and less experienced news staff.”
It seems departures have continued since the meat of the report was researched, too. That means the daily is weaker than it was when this new report was prepared. ODU names a few Pilot journalists who have done important work. They have moved on, taking talent and experience with them.
As I have mentioned in this space before, The Independent News is small by design, and it is not financially capable of scaling up to replace The Pilot. That means we as news consumers need to act if we care about having some sort of in-depth future journalism keeping our government honest and writing about issues that matter.
I continue to believe a nonprofit, Virginia Beach-focused newsroom is viable here with strong backing. That is the most likely solution to the reality that we no longer have a competent newspaper with deep pockets covering our city.
I love doing this paper, but its reach is not large enough to make up for the decline of a big daily. I speak to people all the time about expanding this paper. That costs money. A new financial model is needed, as the report says.
Find the report — and my awesome marijuana joke — at this link.
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