Circuit City whacked many of its best, most experienced -- and therefore most expensive -- staff to cut costs.
The company is now bankrupt.
U.S. newspapers are doing much the same thing with their senior journalists.
Every day, Romenesko, a journalism blog at the Poynter Institute, is rife with news of layoffs at newspapers, most of the time featuring some important, trusted names. It is not the young fresh faces that are getting whacked — they come cheap — but the most experienced, proven people in the room, the equivalent of the sales clerk who could walk you through a thicket of widescreen television choices to the one that actually works for you.
Using clerks as an analogue may not be the most flattering comparison, but I have always thought of journalism as more craft than profession and tell students that it is the accumulation of experience and technique that makes a journalist valuable, not some ineffable beckoning of the muse.
Right now, the consumer has all manner of text to choose from on platforms that range from a cellphone to broadsheet. The critical point of difference journalism offers is that it can reduce the signal-to-noise ratio and provide trusted, branded information. That will be a business into the future, perhaps less paper-bound and smaller, but a very real business.
Newspapers, which began the race with a huge lead in terms of human assets, may end up just another part of the underinformed commodity of clutter.
“Circulation declines were deeper in the last period, and I have to say that I think it has to do with the quality problems from cuts,” said Ken Doctor, a media analyst at Outsell Inc., a market analysis firm. “It is not just the cutting, but the cutting of more-experienced staff, a kind of slow-motion suicide. Circuit City cut its own throat by not realizing what their competitive advantage is, and newspapers are doing the same thing.”