Who's plundering print journalism?

When I was recruited to the Pueblo Chieftain by Jane Rawlings in 2011, I was all-in on digital. I got the job because I had caught the attention of a headhunter with my website work at the East Valley Tribune in suburban Phoenix, where I was also teaching online media part time at my alma mater, Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Websites were (and still are) my world — I teach web design part time at Pueblo Community College and run the website for a government program, among several others. I even crafted the online home of this very Pueblo Star Journal as a volunteer passion project.

But in my heart, I was (and still think I am) an “ink-stained wretch,” as print journalists and newspaper people like to call themselves. I pasted together my own newsletters in elementary school, signed up as a “Cub Reporter” for the “Bear Essential News” program and toured the towering offices and printing presses of the Arizona Republic. In high school I worked on Yearbook, and, when I went to college at Cronkite, I focused on print journalism because the only alternative then was broadcasting, and that just wasn’t for me.

I ended up joining the Tribune’s copy editing team before graduation, learning an appreciation for accuracy and detail and staying up late to get my hands dirty on “press check” duty. I enjoyed the predictability of the production side, picking up skills like graphic and page design and headline writing that eventually translated to my digital destiny, as the industry changed rapidly.

But it was all seen as a valuable part of journalism — fact-based storytelling. I am a journalist.

So I was shocked, but not surprised, on June 13 when the Pueblo newspaper’s current owner Gannett announced it was closing down its local printing operations. The Chieftain itself, the company said, would be printed in Denver starting this summer, while the dozens of other publications it has printed for years would be left to fend for themselves.

Newspapering in Pueblo when I got here 12 years ago was like a time warp. I was greeted warily by editors, writers and sales reps who said they appreciated or needed my help, but they really just wanted me to play with my computer and stay out of their way. I nevertheless dug in — and together, we hauled the Chieftain into the 21st century (with a few stops first in the 20th to catch things up): launching apps, winning awards and expanding an already enviable audience. As I was taught, I have the data to back this up.

Under generations of family leadership, the Chieftain was protected from, or simply ignored, many of the worst ravages of the wider industry’s woes — but that was changing. The managers who brought me in were obviously, if slowly, getting the paper ready for its eventual sale. So my efforts to boost digital audience and engagement were inevitably viewed with suspicion, if not outright hostility.

The way I saw it, based on my experiences in newsrooms outside the Pueblo publishing bubble, was that any heads who didn’t roll when new owners finally came in would spin at how quickly things would change after that. That happened in 2018, when the remaining Rawlings clan sold the Chieftain to GateHouse Media, which would later yield to Gannett — greedy, hedge fund-owned amalgamations of everything that is wrong with local journalism in the U.S.A. today.

Mine was one of the first heads to roll — GateHouse and, later, Gannett “had their own digital people” (not that they really did much for the Chieftain — or had ever set foot in the community I still call home).

Many (not all) of the Chieftain veterans I had the privilege to work with for years couldn’t get past seeing digital media as a threat to the older print product, which is still — despite all the cutbacks and compromises on quality — sought after and sometimes preferred by readers of all ages. I get it — as an Xennial, I’m on the cusp between my earliest memories of solid, authoritative newsprint, and all the tradition wrapped up in it, and the convenience and serotonin-fueled satisfaction of immediate news alerts that find me wherever I am, whatever I’m doing. I’m not a digital native, but more of a digital navigator.

After leaving the Chieftain, I even spent time at Colorado Springs’ Indy and Business Journal organization, doing some “online stuff” but mainly designing newspaper pages and graphics again and coordinating their print production … served by, you guessed it, the peerless press professionals of the Pueblo Chieftain. Those 51 workers are now facing the undeserved uncertainty of unemployment.

There’s no “killer app” here. Neither the internet nor social media, nor their avid users, are responsible for the depredations suffered by publications like the Chieftain and those it prints (at least until August, when much of that business will go to Denver, and some even further, at great cost). That blame belongs at the feet of out-of-state and out-of-touch executives making decisions for communities they’ve never visited or valued.

The Chieftain is more than a newspaper or a website or mobile application — it’s home to a printing powerhouse that has allowed diverse publications throughout Colorado to flourish for decades. Now, because they don’t want to invest in Pueblo or its storied press, a faraway force that answers to no one is shutting down a busy commercial printing operation that allows hundreds of journalists to hold the powerful to account and employs dozens of Puebloans. That’s a threat to freedom if ever there was one. The research on this is resoundingly clear: In a “news desert,” as Pueblo and southern Colorado are in danger of becoming, civic engagement and community connections wither, and local leaders too often go unchecked.

A common dismissal of newspapers today is declaring “print is dead” — but, news alert: That’s an opinion, not a fact. These days the distinction may get blurred, but it’s still there. I always told my colleagues that readers and advertisers decide what formats survive and thrive. That’s an opinion that is supported by facts and data, every time.

Opinion or fact — which one should be the basis for a big business decision like killing off a thriving community printing hub? Even an ink-stained wretch like me can tell you the answer.