The Beginning of a New Age: An Ending for the Washington Post

Moira Lavelle
Magazine Editor

Although it may seem absurd to much of today’s youth, there once was a time when the newspaper was the most influential, most popular news source available. In fact there was a time when it was the only news source available. Everyone read the newspaper to discover what was happening in the world around him or her, and in fact, there once was a time when newspapers were printed twice a day; once in the morning and once at night. Modern morning and evening television reports are modeled much in that same fashion. For years everyone depended upon the white paper and black type that may now look antiquated next to the LCD screens of today’s iPhones or computers.
Newspapers today are suffering severely and as a result have cut back in all facets of their product. The evening newspaper is long gone and more recently papers have been ridding themselves of ancillary workers, photographers, writers, editors, pages, even reducing the size of the paper itself. Even more alarmingly, highly influential papers have begun to close down various bureaus in an effort to cut costs. In a surprise announcement the Washington Post, the third most read Sunday Paper in the nation, reported it will soon be closing all U.S. bureaus, aside from the one in Washington D.C. According to the Post, three news assistants will lose their jobs with the closings, but the six correspondents who work in the various bureaus will be offered jobs in D.C.
The closings, while tragic, make economical sense. The Post, like all other newspapers, and has been hit with the brunt of the recession, losing incredible amounts of money in the past months. Additionally, newspaper circulation is down due to an increasing audience that prefers to read news online. Advertisers have realized this social change and are no longer paying newspapers for ad space. This has been an enormous loss to the newspaper business, as previously a majority of profit was made from advertisers. In past years the Boston Globe and Tribune Co’s Baltimore Sun have also closed bureaus as a cost saving measure.
The Washington Post will be closing its long-standing bureaus in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles on December 31 of this year. In the past ten years bureaus in Miami, Denver and Austin have also been closed down. The executive editor of the Washington Post, Marcus Brauchli, sent a memo out to employees on Tuesday November 24th stating: “At a time of limited resources and increased competitive pressure, it’s necessary to concentrate our journalistic firepower on our central mission of covering Washington and the news, trends and ideas that shape both the region and the country’s politics, policies and government.” Brauchli continued, “We will continue to cover events around the country as we have for decades, by sending reporters into the field. We have a strong tradition of bringing understanding and authority to our coverage of politics and issues that matter, wherever the stories take us.”