By Gina Channell Wilcox
E-mail Gina Channell Wilcox
About this blog: I am President of Embarcadero Media's East Bay Division and the publisher of the Pleasanton Weekly, Dublin TriValley Views, San Ramon Express and Danville Express. As a 25-plus-year veteran of the media industry, I have experience...
(More)About this blog: I am President of Embarcadero Media's East Bay Division and the publisher of the Pleasanton Weekly, Dublin TriValley Views, San Ramon Express and Danville Express. As a 25-plus-year veteran of the media industry, I have experience in print, broadcast and digital media. In 2004, I left Illinois where I was Executive Editor / Associate Publisher of a group of 14 weekly newspapers and one daily belonging to what is now known as the Chicago Sun-Times Group, to move to Northern California to launch two newspapers and a radio station. To date I have launched eight weekly newspapers (one in Spanish), one daily newspaper, one monthly newspaper, one monthly news magazine, several news websites and an FM radio station. I joined Embarcadero Media in 2006 because of its focus on quality, community journalism and the entrepreneurial spirit of its staff and management team. I have a bachelor's degree in Communications and a master's degree in Business Administration and spend the little spare time I have teaching for University of Phoenix and with my three children, ages 25, 21 and 13.
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Bay Area News Group has
announced it is merging five of its newspapers, including the Tri-Valley Times (formerly known as the Tri-Valley Herald), The Valley Times and The Contra Costa Times. These titles will no longer be published; instead readers will receive a regional daily, the East Bay Times, beginning in April.
Sharon Ryan, the group's publisher, tried her best to put a positive spin on it, but it missed the mark.
"Readers have been quite clear with us about how much they like their newspapers and what they want more of, and we're changing to serve them better," Ryan said in a story last week.
I empathize with Ryan. Running a print media operation has challenges like no other industry. The Internet changed the business model and all newspaper publishers here and across the nation have had to make drastic, undesirable and unpopular changes just to remain in print.
It's Ryan's statement that the group is "changing to serve (readers) better" that I take issue with. Maybe changing to
continue serving readers, but
better? This was a cost cutting measure - a necessary and understandable one. But providing regional news as opposed to local news is not serving readers better. Reducing the number of journalists covering local government is not serving readers better.
Our staff has had to make changes, too - everything from reducing office space to centralizing our production at our headquarters on the Peninsula. We continue to receive support from readers through Support Local Journalism and by implementing a "pay meter" on our websites. We also ask that readers support our advertisers and acknowledge their participation in keeping local media alive and well.
Unlike most newspapers, which have cut back on the breadth of their local news coverage, we have taken steps to maintain the level of professional reporting readers have come to expect. Coverage of local government and local issues specific to the communities we cover is at the heart of quality journalism, and quality journalism is imperative to an effective democracy.
