EXTRA: TIMES TAKES A COFFEY BREAK AS INKY'S KING RESIGNS

THE DEATH IN EL PASO SHOULD BE REASON TO MOURN --AND RENEW

The newspaper industry can live as though it's in decline, or not

To paraphrase what Shakespeare had Antony tell the assembled crowd, I come to bury the El Paso Herald-Post, not praise it.

I've never been to El Paso and, I greatly suspect, never read the Herald-Post. But it represents a number of things about the U.S. newspaper business that we must confront on occasion, that occasion usually being the death of a daily.

First and foremost, the loss of the Herald-Post represents the penultimate daily newspaper competition in Texas (the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Dallas Morning News each have nameplates fighting it out in Arlington). I know enough about Texas newspapering to know that there were legendary rivalries in Dallas and Houston and that the competitive spirit has always run high among Texas journalists.

A secondary issue is one of joint operating agreements; El Paso was one (there are now 16 in the United States) and it was the junior partner.

I know something about being the smaller afternoon daily in a JOA – I worked at one for more than 12 years.

It is enormously demoralizing to watch your circulation dwindle. We always liked to think we were the better paper, but the owners inevitably curtail spending on the editorial product and things begin to go downhill.

In El Paso, Scripps had left the paper with 35 editorial employees (which is roughly twice the number they needed, but too small a staff nonetheless).

They did some good things at the Herald-Post and the community does not deserve to lose the paper.

It's sad to see another one bite the dust. By our count, that leaves 1551 daily papers in the United States, and all it will take is a severe downturn in advertising income or an upturn in materials cost (newsprint or diesel fuel) and we'll probably lose another dozen.

At the height of the newsprint price craziness in 1994, one top newspaper executive predicted those dozen would die before the end of that year; fortunately, he was wrong.

But it is time to stop moaning about the death of one newspaper and to begin to figure out how to pump up the entire industry.

Serendipitously, we may have something of a road map:

Inside, Correspondent Jon Fine takes a look at burgeoning classified revenues and talks to a variety of industry executives and observers, attempting to answer the question, "When will all this good fortune end?"

Also inside, Senior Editor Pete Wetmore looks at the end of the seven-year saga of a reporter in Tacoma, Wash., whose political activities made the newspaper's management uncomfortable – so uncomfortable that the paper reassigned the reporter to a copy editor job. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a state court's ruling that allowed the paper to make the reassignment.

Wrapping up the issue, we visit with the prospective owners of the Quincy Patriot Ledger in Massachusetts (who appear to make the concept of the public's trust more important than profits), as well as taking a look at a raft of swaps, sales and mergers.

In that last bit, we note the ascension of Mark Willes to publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Willes, the former vice chairman of General Mills, has been the chairman of Times Mirror for more than 18 months and in that time has shaken up the company greatly. Willes, it is said, is a firm believer in the potential of newspapers.

"This is only a declining industry if we manage it like a declining industry," the on-line magazine Salon quoted Willes as saying. "If we manage it like a growth industry, it will be a growth industry."

Perchance Willes is right. We may know that the Herald-Post won't be the last daily to close, but we should work hard to ensure that it's a long time before the next shutdown.

Nevertheless, as Antony said, "My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must pause till it come back to me."

– David M. Cole

Inside ...