“The reason it matters is that because there is no longer a healthy, aggressive press corps–and no David Yepson-type dean of political journalists–candidates don’t run the same kind of gauntlet they once did. They’re not challenged by journalists.” -Joshua Green

Pundits have been offering all sorts of theories to explain the political success of Rand Paul, the radical libertarian/Tea Party candidate who recently won the Republican primary in Kentucky, especially in light of Paul’s recent political pratfalls: attacking the 1964 Civil Rights Act and saying BP is not to blame for the Gulf oil spill. Now the Republican party is trying to wrangle in the unpredictable politician.

David Simon, and others, have suggested that the next decade without newspapers will be a golden age of political corruption. Now, Joshua Green, writing on the Atlantic’s website, thinks layoffs at Kentucky newspapers, especially at the Louisville Courier-Journal, are to blame for Rand Paul’s ascendancy and his inability to handle national media attention (the Civil Rights Act flub happened during a national television interview on MSNBC and Paul became only the 3rd guest in over 60 years to pull out of an appearance on Meet the Press, a nationally-broadcast Sunday morning political news show). Without an agressive local press before the primaries, Green argues, Paul managed to keep voters focused on his message of a balanced budget and government overstepping the Constitution. Now that he faces the scrutiny of the national press corps willing to aggressively question Paul’s talking points, he’s making the sorts of mistakes one would expect to be uncovered by the local media before primary elections.

There is some counterpoint to this position, though, laying blame on the national media from the start. The Courier-Journal did, in fact, publish an editorial on April 25 which said Paul “holds an unacceptable view of civil rights.”

“The photographic vision for the magazine is not one that I can any longer be considered a good fit for. Pictures tend to be used as part of an overall design conceit, not as art in and of itself. I think it’s called modern, which would seem to make me old fashioned.” -outgoing Newsweek director of photography Simon Barnett told PDN

It seemed like only yesterday Newsweek announced a big redesign in hopes of regaining lost market share. Photos got bigger play online after the redesign, but according to recently laid-off director of photography Simon Barnett, photography took a back seat to the overall design of the magazine. This week’s round of layoffs saw four key members of the photo staff shown the door.

Related:

• Paper Cuts, a map of newspaper layoffs. Now over 14,000 newspaper jobs gone in 2009.
• Gawker’s layoffs posts.
• Wikipedia’s results for “magazine layoffs.”
• MediaBistro’s Revolving Door Newsletter and listings.

The Rocky Mountain News on Feb. 27, 2009, the last day of a nearly 150 year history

Goodbye, Colorado. The Rocky Mountain News has published its final edition. There’s a long video about the final day of the paper on the front page of the site and at vimeo. Photographers also covered the final days.

I’ve just been catching up with my rss feeds, and the NPPA news feed is not making for fun reading. A few more friends have been laid off from their newspaper jobs this week, and they’re not alone:

I know I’m missing some, leave any more casualties in the comments. Or check out Paper Cuts for more newspaper layoff numbers.

Hot on the heels of the Tribune Company’s beginning the bankruptcy protection procedure, the Annenberg School of Communications website reports that Los Angeles Times editor Russ Stanton has said that the paper’s online revenue now exceeds the paper’s editorial payroll costs (third paragraph, last sentence). This is being widely noted (most links go to this Recovering Journalist post), and Jeff Jarvis has some followup with numbers.

This seems like good news, and hopefully more papers can soon make the same claim. I’m worried, though, like one commenter on Recovering Journalist, that the good news has come after at least 523 layoffs at the paper this year (Papercuts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Getting the website to cover payroll is likely much easier with 500+ fewer employees. And while I don’t have numbers to back this up, a newspaper requires a lot more money than its payroll in order to operate. There’s continual equipment and material fees, legal fees, and many other expenses involved in putting out the news. The New York Times, for instance, has it’s own Research and Development Group (and here’s a great tour through the facilities with Talking Heads front man David Byrne), which has got to be expensive to operate but which is necessary to forge ahead in the new media environment. Covering the payroll is a part of the picture, and it’s a great step, but in order for newspaper journalism to continue either in print or online, the companies will need more money.

(via APADnews)

Lots of news over the past few weeks about the plight of American newspapers. Here are some of the links I’ve been reading:

Oh man. That’s a lot of bad news. Go to Cute Overload for a while. And here are a few examples of why people feel newspapers are necessary.