Newsrooms go dark

Newspapers across the country are suffering from hard times. Many of their editorial staffs are forced to take unpaid furlough days every quarter and contend with a multitude of other cutbacks. It’s no secret that shareholders’ relentless pursuit of increasing profits and the industry’s burying its head in the sand about the Internet spurred the crash.

Still, it was a sobering and sad occasion for me last month when I visited the West Virginia daily where I worked for eight years. Half the lights in the newsroom were burned out and had been so for some time, and the floor had buckled in a couple of places. The solution: Mark the areas with orange cones. It seemed permanent.

Even more disconcerting was the silence. It was like a cemetery. And this was the morning the news broke of the late U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd’s death. The place should have been a beehive of activity. Byrd was an important figure in West Virginia’s history and in the U.S. Senate, having served the longest congressional term in history.

I was prepared for bad. I didn’t expect the worst. The newsroom was virtually empty. Reporters weren’t scurrying around trying to make deadline or huddling with editors in strategy planning sessions. By late afternoon, at least two of the editors had left for the day. No one was working the phones. In fact, I wondered who was even putting out the paper and if they could afford to print the issue given that they couldn’t keep all the lights on.

In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when I worked there, a big news day like that was an exciting, adrenaline-filled rush. My former co-workers that I keep in touch with know what I’m talking about. I’m not just being romantic about it either. We were a cohesive and talented group of reporters, editors, copyeditors, photographers and page designers who lived, ate and breathed newspapers. We got up each day charged and ready to uncover the next big story. The newsroom thrived and so did we.

Not anymore.