There were a number of emotional Twitter messages among the Indianapolis Star reporting staff today, December 1st, 2020.  The corporate ownership had offered incentives for those involved in the newspaper’s journalism (reporters, editors & a few others) to leave their employment.

When a large corporation makes such an offer, there is an obvious reason – for every employee taking the offer, that is one less layoff that is likely to come later.  Many journalists at the Star didn’t want to get the pink slip later, so opted to take the management offer and change the direction of their careers.

This brings back some bad memories for me.  I lost my job as a radio news anchor and reporter in 1982 through no fault of my own.   In fact, I could see the pain in the general manager’s eyes when he broke the news to me.  The recession had hurt ad sales and my job was being eliminated, even though he also called me an exemplary employee.

Sometimes in your working life, those are the breaks.  I picked up some part-time reporting work in Indianapolis and had some nice radio news offers from outside Indiana.  After much reflection, I decided to stay in Indy and completely change my career path at age 31.

So, I know how these IndyStar people feel.  It is hitting the Star’s remaining reporting staff the hardest.  Those journalists know there will continue to be a lot of news to cover in the state’s largest city, and the state’s largest newspaper just got even smaller.  Those staying will have a lot more work to do.

So, in the middle of a once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic, which is also causing massive economic pain, a major local news operation is cutting its reporting and editing staff once again.  So it goes with the changing economics of the news business.

Never before have we needed local news content more, but we have fewer employees in the news side of the Star than at any point in time anyone can remember.  I realize the economics of newspapers are changing, but the reduction in news staffing numbers appears to be happening at the papers owned by large corporate entities.  The days of the locally-owned daily newspaper, while still in existence in a few places (like Fort Wayne) is the exception, not the rule.  No longer is the owner of the local newspaper a member of the local community.

There is so much news to cover and fewer people to chase down all the stories.

My little volunteer blog merely makes a dent in the news content hole we see around here.  I am just one person and try to cover Fishers as best as an old, retired guy can. I make no money doing LarryInFishers.com, I am just trying to serve the community in which I have lived since 1991.

There are some locally-owned news sources around.  The Indianapolis Business Journal is locally owned and employs excellent journalists.  I have a news-gathering partnership agreement with the Hamilton County Reporter, owned by Hamilton County resident Jeff Jellison.  The Noblesville Times is owned by a chain headquartered in Indiana.

However, many of the Hamilton County newspapers do not employ that many journalists.  They all do the best they can, but the economics of the news business is what it is.

In late March, I was ready to change the direction of LarryInFishers.com.  Gathering and writing news is hard work, particularly as a volunteer.  I was planning on writing commentaries, and focusing the blog & podcasts more on local arts activities.

Then came the lockdowns with the COVID-19 pandemic.  That cancelled most of the arts activities in the area.

So, despite my announcement that I would end the news blog, I saw a responsibility to cover the pandemic news in Fishers, since other news organizations were just too busy to focus on Fishers.

Then, in late October, I contracted the novel coronavirus.  To this day, I have no idea how I caught it…I was as careful as possible, following all the guidelines, and still ended up with it.

The symptoms were not pleasant, but have no room to complain…..it appears I have made a full recovery.  But as I sat in my chair, with the virus having sucked all the energy out of my body, there was plenty of time for contemplation.

At that time, I decided that if I recover, I will go back to blogging and producing podcasts.  I continue to believe it is an important public service to the people of Fishers.

My point here is that I am an exception.  There are places like Fishers, there are entire neighborhoods in Indianapolis, that do not get the commercial news coverage they deserve.

The recent exodus of staff from the Star, among them many very experienced and talented journalists, will be a blow for all of us as news consumers.  Local news has never been more important, yet the economics of the business has created a situation where we have far fewer people covering local news.

I would hope the number of workers at the Star accepting the incentives to leave will mean there will not be another round of layoffs, but there are no guarantees.

Our local institutions and community leaders need to think about what it means to lose honest, independent news coverage.  We all need to think about solutions to the lack of local news.

In the meantime, the remaining journalists in all of its forms (print, TV & radio) will feel the need to cover more news with fewer people.  This will not be easy.

One comforting thought is this – we are fortunate to have a number of outstanding reporters still working locally.  That is all that gives me hope at this point in time