Sounding the alarm over daily’s sale to Ogden
Editor’s Note: Although The Frederick Extra does not accept anonymous contributions as practice, it does make exceptions. This writer is a former Ogden Newspapers employee who asked to keep her name private because she has friendships with former colleagues now employed at The Frederick News Post.
It’s only natural that last month’s news that Frederick’s family-owned daily newspaper would be sold to a chain would generate jitters, both for those who work at The Frederick News-Post and for readers, too.
But for anyone familiar with the company that’s purchasing the FNP, this news isn’t just cause for unease but cause for absolute alarm. This particular buyer, The Ogden Newspapers based in Wheeling, W.Va., will destroy the FNP as readers know it by slashing the paper’s staff and resources and then by underpaying and overworking the employees who remain.
I’ve worked for Ogden, both as a reporter and as an editor and today I live in a community that’s served by an Ogden daily. Wait, served isn’t the right word. There’s nothing about the newspaper that comes out every morning that serves the community. Day in and day out, it’s an unreliable mess.
Last week, the paper had a headline with the word “tree” misspelled.
On Monday, the sum total of the front-section local news came down to this – one story about an Easter egg hunt at a local church (“Treasure hunt: Families participate in Easter egg search”) and another about a downtown Palm Sunday service. Wire stories made up the rest of the section.
I’m not a newspaper snob, but I cannot imagine that the sophisticated Frederick audience will embrace such a poor product.
In Frederick and all over, the trend for decades has shown newspapers shedding readers, dropping the daily newspaper habit in favor of getting their news online. To keep readers, newspapers have to give them good reason to pick up the paper – and the FNP has been doing that, with good, clear writing; eye-catching photos; thoughtful editing; attractive graphic design; and a commitment to the community to provide the information that’s needed here.
Imagine learning the award-winning restaurant you’ve relied on for decades has been sold to a chain of convenience stores – and not, say Sheetz, but a convenience store chain that pays workers the absolute minimum, doesn’t staff the place adequately, doesn’t keep good, experienced people for long.
Convenience stores and restaurants have to pass health department inspections, but there are no state-mandated standards for newspapers (and overall that’s a good thing.) Instead, journalists do this policing themselves. We ask, 'Does this newspaper follow the industry standard procedures that ensure a good product?' Having worked at Ogden, I can say good journalism does sometimes end up in the newspaper, but when it happens, it’s normally in spite of how the company operates.
Let’s go back for a minute to that Easter egg hunt story that made up the front page centerpiece on Monday. Here’s the opening graph: “Tomahawk Christian church hosted a community Easter egg hunt on Sunday.” (And yes, the word “church,” in lowercase, when it’s part of the proper name.)
This is typical Ogden – here are some words that take up space on the page. Here’s a headline. Here’s a photo. Here are more words beneath the photo.
But don’t expect anything clever or interesting. Don’t expect a photo taken by a professional photographer – it’s going to be something snapped by the reporter as an afterthought as he or she works to get the story. Don’t expect a story that’s comprehensive, or even clear. Do expect that key names will be misspelled, or spelled one way in the story and another in the photo caption.
Quality is not a priority for Ogden.
Sadly, the company that owns more than 40 daily newspapers in West Virginia, Ohio, Florida, New York and elsewhere isn’t changing tack as the FNP becomes its first Maryland purchase.
Just days after the news came that the FNP had won dozens of awards in the competition put on every year by MDDC Press Association, the nonprofit organization of newspapers in Maryland, Delaware and D.C., word began to spread that the Ogdens have told top editor Patrick Pexton – the former Washington Post ombudsman who’d overseen all that good work – that he wasn’t welcome to stay on. Dozens more experienced, caring FNP staff members are expected to get their pink slips later this month.
For the community, these losses will translate into a newspaper that’s far less compelling to read. I’m heartbroken for readers who have relied on the FNP.
I’m also saddened for the workers who still have jobs after the sale takes effect next month. In the years when I worked for the Ogden paper in my hometown, I consistently worked extra hours every week – with no pay, certainly no overtime – because I wanted to do a good job for my community. I didn’t want my name on a sloppily written story or a story that didn’t provide the news that readers needed and deserved.
All these years later, I would not work for Ogden for free this way, and I hope that journalists at the FNP choose to only work the 40 hours they’re paid to work. Ogden has signaled to the loyal, talented journalists at the FNP how they view the value of a high-quality news product.
A friend of mine who works at CNN recently offered some advice that I would like to share with the journalists at the FNP. A veteran of multiple newsrooms that have been through layoffs, he knows that so many journalists struggle after finding themselves working for companies that take a bare-bones approach to covering news.
He writes:
“What we owe our employers (and more importantly, the consumers of our work):
* Honesty that day on the job
* Journalistic integrity that day on the job
* A day's hard work for a day's pay
And that's where it ends.
What we do not owe our employers:
* Working extra hours for free because our mission is important
* Wrecking our personal lives for the sake of the job.”
There’s a sea change coming to journalists and news consumers in Frederick. Journalists that have been devoted to doing good work in Frederick will soon be employed by a company where poor quality is the norm.
And readers will in effect lose the newspaper that traces its start to 1883 with publication of the evening The News, a paper that’s been family-owned all those years. There will be an FNP starting in May but I can tell you, it won’t be the same.
The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the contributors to Extra Voices on this website do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of The Frederick Extra.
