I had written previously about Charles Apple’s blog post about the recent layoffs at Tribune Co., which targeted designers and copy editors. The comment thread on that post has been getting heated as people have lobbed criticism, much of which I agree with, at the Tribune brass for the move. Nick Masuda, a designer at the Orlando Sentinel, a Tribune paper, and Bonita Burton, the assistant managing editor in charge of visuals at the Sentinel, chimed in to counter some of the criticism and have received the predictable backlash.

I don’t know Nick Masuda or Bo Burton personally, and I haven’t set foot inside a Tribune Co. newsroom, so I don’t have any special insight in that regard. I would say that, from my previous experience in other situations like this, the survival-mode climate at newspapers in general doesn’t lend itself to standing up to the brass on any big issue. As the old Chinese saying goes: When you are under a low roof, you have no choice but to bow your head. That’s why I wasn’t surprised no manager at any of the Tribune papers wanted to comment about the move, and why I WAS surprised that Bo would throw herself into the fray on the comment thread. The content of her responses are about what I expected because, frankly, what can one really expect someone in her position to say in public under the circumstances? Sure, she can fall on the sword, lambaste Tribune Co. for the move, and be applauded by her peers for it, but what’s all that worth when the brass decide they don’t like what she had to say? Of course, the backlash to her comments is also understandable and predictable. Perhaps the best thing for her to have done would’ve been to say nothing at all and just let the outraged say their piece and let the storm pass more quickly. Regardless of whether a manager is drinking the corporate Cool-Aid or is disgusted by it, there is really one side he or she can take publicly if they want to keep their jobs, and it’s not the side that would appease the critics and the afflicted.

One more thought on Tribune Co.’s news modules

They seem to be a step toward creating a more distinct separation between a regional newspaper’s national content and local content. I wonder if this is the beginning of a move toward eventually turning these regional papers into local-only publications. Perhaps the next step would be that these papers would only carry local content under their banners, with a small Chicago Tribune-produced national news publication inserted. If they arrive at that point, then when you reach a point where you feel like national news is no longer worth your while, it would be a small leap to remove the insert, and voila, your regional paper that once had a substantial A section of national news is now a publication delivering only local content. At each step, you can likely shed jobs and costs, ending up with a much leaner operation in the end.

Designers’ future at newspapers

If you are a designer at a newspaper, and you agree that to survive and eventually thrive again, newspaper companies have to become Web-centric entities, then there are really only two ways this scenario can play out, and as much as it pains me, I don’t think either of them looks good for current newspaper designers’ job outlook in this industry.

Scenario 1: Newspapers don’t successfully make the transition to the Web

We are already seeing how that’s going to play out for designers. If newspapers fail to make the transition, then their financial slide will continue, and as staffs shrink, the focus will continue to be keeping as many content producers as possible at the expense of people who work on the presentation of content. As a former newspaper designer, I certainly know the contributions designers make to a newspaper, but when it comes down to it, a designer’s function at a newspaper is not content creation. If a newspaper is forced to choose between good presentation and no content or content with mediocre presentation, guess which one is the more logical choice? In addition, in a situation where quality becomes the secondary concern, as is the case at newspapers now, it is a lot easier to templatize design functions than reporting functions. Designers are more expendable than reporters because their most essential job functions are more easily automated. It was the same with production department jobs that went by the wayside when newspapers went from paste-up to pagination and then to direct-to-plate printing, or when newspaper librarian jobs became expendable as editorial systems got better at electronic, automated archiving.

Scenario 2: Newspapers do successfully become Web entities

In this scenario, there will be significantly fewer design jobs at newspaper companies. The print product will either be gone or be a dramatically smaller entity than it is now, and there goes most of your print design jobs. As for designing online, the day-to-day design needs of an online news operation is relatively small. That’s the whole point of having a CMS — to separate content from design. After your initial site setup, you can run the site and populate it with content for the most part without a designer or even a programmer. You can templatize everything from the overall architecture of a story page to individual elements such as photo galleries, maps, and charts. With that kind of setup, it’s hard to see many fulltime design jobs fitting into the daily production process.

There will still be a need for designers/graphic artists at online news operations, but this would mainly be for specific projects, which means the number of bodies needed to do this would be much less than the number of visual specialists employed at newspapers today. Furthermore, when newspaper companies have finally made the transition to Web-only entities, they would likely find little incentive in hiring the designers from their former print operations to fill the design roles in the online operation. I’m not saying that these designers are not good or that they can’t make that transition. But let’s say if you’re a newspaper designer who has been designing the print product for 10 years and then transitioned to doing more online projects at your paper the last couple years, when the print component goes away and the online component is all that’s left, the company can likely find someone younger and cheaper with those same two years of online design experience that you have, without having to pay extra for the 10 years of print experience that are no longer relevant to its current needs. It’s harsh, it’s cold, it may not be right, but if that scenario comes to pass, it’s what’s likely to  happen.

It pains me to write those last couple sentences, because I do love newspaper design. But as news companies evolve toward becoming online entities, while they will still have a need for good design, I see that need being filled by significantly fewer bodies than now.