Roll Over Art Coulson

For those not paying attention (like me), there seem to be some big changes a brewin' at the Pioneer Press. Apparently, earlier this month editorial page editor Art Coulson resigned. I never heard anything about it until I saw this mention in passing in the article about the new editor Mike Burbach.

And according to reliable sources, editorial board member Deborah Locke has now also begun "pursuing other interests." That may be a Fraters Libertas exclusive, since I find no reference to it anywhere on Google.

It is hard to judge exactly what these changes portend. The Pioneer Press has been shedding prominent staff members for years. For the most part, it's been addition by subtraction, when you consider the dearly departed include the likes of Nick Coleman, Brian Lambert, and Kirk Anderson.

These new departures seem to be in that tradition. Deborah Locke was as relentlessly and predictably liberal as any of the above. Art Coulson, as a by-lined presence, was rarely heard from at all. When he did appear, he was reliably left-of-center and mostly wrote dull, self-serving commentary on American Indian issues (check out any of his last four columns for details). As writers or personalities neither added significant value to the Pioneer Press product and neither will be missed by any meaningful proportion of the audience.

But, in the broader view, major changes like this make you think of worst case scenarios. The parent company of the Pioneer Press has been under some pressure by its stock holders to junk the entire enterprise. The parent company of the Star Tribune has shown interest in picking up the pieces. For those in town who love newspapers and dream of a vibrant, competitive marketplace of ideas, there is no scenario worse than the left wing bully to the West, swooping in to tighten its monopolistic grip on the hearts and minds of Twin Cities news consumers.

But there is a best case scenario present as well. If somehow the paper can retain its independence, they again have an opportunity to significantly differentiate themselves in the marketplace - and not just locally. Conservative editorial pages are a rare commodity on the national scene. Gathering some real right wing talent under the Pioneer Press masthead would draw attention not only from the 48% of Minnesotans positively disposed to such a product. But also from the national scene, where the Wall Street Journal seems to be the only viable alternative to the journalistic status quo.

The good news is that the Pioneer Press already has a solid foundation in place, with Mark Yost (who seems to get more prominent play for his opinions in the Wall Street Journal than in his own paper) and Craig Westover, a deep thinker and terrific writer who is still inexplicably relegated to $75 hobby columnist status. Add a few more voices from the deep pool of local or national talent and it could really make a splash.

Much of the paper's future is dependent on the disposition of the new editor, Mike Burbach. According to the Pioneer Press announcement of his hiring, there's good news and bad news.

Burbach described himself as a political independent. He has more than two decades of newspaper experience, as well as having held a variety of jobs ranging from meat cutter to bartender.

On the good side, he was once a bar tender. So he no doubt will understand the needs of everyday readers like the Atomizer.

On the bad side, he describes himself as an "independent." And there is no greater predictor of one's liberal politics than self-identifying as an "independent" in the press. For evidence, check out the Pioneer Press round-up of local blogs and notice how most of the liberals describe themselves. Included in the ranks of the independents include a gay activist running a site called "Dump Michelle Bachmann."

There is very little evidence to judge Burbach's political inclinations from his previous jobs. Most accounts characterize him as more of a financial hatchet man than anything else. This from the American Journalism Review:

Things are also tough in Akron, where the staff of the Beacon Journal is slogging through a gloomy Ohio winter. The paper is contending with a spartan budget regime imposed by its parent, Knight Ridder, which is watching its pennies now that its largest shareholder, a Florida-based investment group, has pressured management into putting the company up for sale.So far the Beacon Journal has avoided layoffs, but for one week in December it shrank dramatically. The paper temporarily slashed its opinion pages from two to one, combined a features section with its local section and trimmed pages from its sports section. Space for daily TV listings has been cut by more than half.Amid all the trimming, the alternative Cleveland Scene reported in December that the paper had put a moratorium for the rest of the year on buying notebooks, pens and batteries for its reporters and photographers.

The story instantly came to symbolize the industry's malaise, but the Beacon Journal's outgoing managing editor, Mike Burbach, says it hasn't been quite the crisis the story portrayed: "Everyone has what he needs to do his job," he says. "We're just not buying anything we don't need."

Burbach has concluded that the ground is permanently shifting, and not just under his own newsroom. "This is different than before," he says. "The business has changed dramatically. Google didn't exist before. How many cable channels are there now, how many magazines, how many more ways are there to reach people? If we want to keep at this, and if we believe in what we're doing, we have to adapt. Some of what we do and love to do will help us compete, and some of it won't. We have to learn the difference.'

Newspapers still have some important competitive advantages over the rest of the news media. They have name recognition and trusted brand names. They (still) have the biggest newsrooms in town. And they have community connections. "I still think there's going to be strong demand for locally powerful journalism that no one can do like a newspaper," says Mike Burbach. "There's investigative and enterprise [reporting]. People respect and respond to the kind of information and digging that helps them make their lives and their communities better."

And this Q & A from the pages of his old paper, the Akron Beacon Journal, regarding the slimmed down editorial pages presented after some budget cuts:

We're determined to do the best we can with the resources we have. We're determined to do everything we can to manage through this transition -- whatever it turns out to be -- constructively.

It's a difficult time in the newspaper business. We're straddling media -- print and the Internet, particularly -- and generations. Older people grew up getting much of their news from newspapers, and younger people have grown up getting much of their information on the Internet.

One of our challenges is to make sure our business is strong so we can continue to serve the community with compelling journalism. We intend to do so.

He's got a a good understanding of the problems he faces, but not exactly Braveheart level commitment to winning.

My under informed, snap analysis is that this guy doesn't have the vision or commitment (or institutional support) to change anything dramatically. I'll be happy to be wrong about that. But with expectations appropriately lowered, if he's able to better utilize the assets he currently has on staff and not hire boring, ideological retreads of the Coulson/Locke mold, that may be as close to victory as we're going to get.