Latest shutdown means most papers where I worked are gone

The Demopolis (Ala.) Times announced Wednesday that its latest edition is its last edition. Newspaper closures are so common today that it’s barely worth noticing — but the Times was the very last newspaper where I ever worked. So I noticed.

When I resigned as editor and publisher of The Demopolis Times — many years ago — I assumed I’d be back in another newsroom pretty quickly. Instead, I made an accidental career change and spent the next 20 years as a political consultant.

With the closure of The Demopolis Times, most of the newspapers where I worked are now gone. That’s no surprise, because the newspaper industry has been slowly dying for something like 30 years. But it’s sad to watch the demise of something I once loved and thought I’d spend my entire life doing.

I detested the time I spent running the Times, so I have no special love for the town or for the newspaper. But it feels a bit like watching the deaths of people I used to work with. And that’s gut-wrenching.

Unless I’m forgetting one of them, there were seven newspapers where I worked over the 12 years I spent in the business. Here are the newspapers where I worked and the positions I held at each:

— The Community News, Sumiton, Ala.; Managing editor
— Daily Mountain Eagle, Jasper, Ala.; Managing editor, sports editor, lifestyles editor, reporter, photographer
— The Bolivar Commercial, Cleveland, Miss.; Managing editor
— Birmingham Business Guide, Birmingham, Ala.; Editor and publisher
— The Southern Times, Birmingham, Ala.; Editor and publisher
— The Clanton Advertiser, Clanton, Ala.; General manager
— The Demopolis Times, Demopolis, Ala.; Editor and publisher

The papers in Sumiton, Ala.; Cleveland, Miss.; Birmingham; and Demopolis are all shut down. To be fair, two of those (the ones in Birmingham) were start-ups that I owned. But the rest were owned by newspaper chains with a lot of success and financial strength. Today, those once-successful companies are shedding their dying assets.

Of those seven newspapers, only two remain. The paper in Clanton, Ala., is still a small daily as far as I know. The one in Jasper, Ala. — where I started while I was still in college — was sold a few years ago and no longer even owns its own presses.

When I started seeing predictions — back in the 1990s — that newspapers were eventually going to die, I didn’t believe it. Those making the predictions believed that television would crowd newspapers out, but I thought there would always be a niche for community newspapers. I couldn’t foresee what the Internet was going to do — to readers’ attention spans and to the advertising market.

I was proud of the work I did at every newspaper along the way.

When I took over the newspaper in Demopolis, the news content was lousy. The writing was poor. The design was outdated. The use of photos was terrible. The paper was relatively profitable, but the product was terrible. I believed that cheated our readers and their community. So I worked hard to improve the paper.

After less than a year as editor and publisher, I had turned the news content around. At the next annual meeting of the Alabama Press Association, we won one of the four major statewide awards. The most prestigious awards given each year were general excellence (one to a daily and one to a non-daily) and most improved (one daily and one non-daily).

For the work I did — working with a very small staff, primarily one other journalist who was incredibly talented — we won the award as most improved non-daily.

In their summary, the contest judges said this about our improvements:

“A 180-degree reversal. Has a greater interest in what the readers are looking for. Cleaner typography with more modular layout makes news easier to spot. Also has increased the number of entry points to the paper. Better understanding of photographs and how to use them. Additional sports coverage is a welcome addition.”

(The old design is on the left in the graphic above, which comes from the awards booklet. My version is on the right.)

Even after all these years, it mattered to me that our little newspaper was doing a better job of serving its readers. I was incredibly proud of what we accomplished. But none of that mattered to the company for which I worked.

I regularly clashed with the corporate vice president who oversaw my newspaper. I didn’t like or respect him. I don’t think he understood what I was trying to do. When I walked out of that building for the last time — after resigning during a meeting with him — I felt liberated from a corporate system where I didn’t fit.

I could tell stories from each newspaper where I worked. I could tell you all the lessons I learned. I could talk about the mistakes I made and what I learned from each. I could passionately tell you why I believed that what we were doing mattered to the communities we were part of.

But all of that seems moot now. It feels self-indulgent to even talk about it. Nobody really cares about what one minor journalist did years ago. Nobody cares about what happened at newspapers that are now dead.

There was something special about working at a newspaper. It felt like a cause. Like a mission. And the feeling of walking into a newspaper and smelling the newsprint and the ink and the giant machinery is something I’ll never get over.

But those of us who once loved this business have moved on. The newspapers are dying. Most people don’t really care. But the world is far worse today because of these losses, in ways that are hard to explain.

There’s nothing I can do to change any of this, but it makes me sad.