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Though painful, employees say mergers help papers

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Jim Stingl

It started as a rumor.

While working at the Milwaukee Journal, Jim Stingl had heard the rumors for years. But as circulation went down, Stingl said he and other employees of Milwaukee’s two daily newspapers had to wonder if a merger was about to take place.

“Then the rumors got stronger,” Stingl said. “These turned out to be true.”

The morning Milwaukee Sentinel and the evening Milwaukee Journal were combined in 1995 to become the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.  The Journal Company, now Journal Communications, Inc., purchased the Sentinel in 1962 and has been employee-owned since 1937.

A decade prior to the creation of the Journal Sentinel, the Twin Cities lost half its daily newspapers through mergers.  By 1985, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., each had one major metro paper where two had been in 1981.

The morning Pioneer Press and the evening St. Paul Dispatch, which had been owned and operated together since 1909, were merged in 1985 to make one all-day newspaper -- the Pioneer Press Dispatch.  When afternoon publication ceased in 1990, the name was changed to St. Paul Pioneer Press.

The morning Minneapolis Tribune and the evening Minneapolis Star were combined in 1982 to make one daily morning newspaper – The Minneapolis Star and Tribune.  The pair of papers had been operated together by the Cowles family since 1941.  In 1987, the name was changed to Star Tribune.

Following the mergers, employees of the major metros in the Twin Cities and Milwaukee said their newspapers became stronger due to their combined resources.  But the mergers resulted in layoffs, fewer viewpoints and lost competition.

Stingl, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist, was working at the Journal's Sunday magazine, "Wisconsin," when the merger was announced.  He remembers the fear that spread through the Journal's newsroom.

"I'm surprised we put out a newspaper each day at that time because (the merger) was all anyone talked about," Stingl said.

Michele Kenner, who was an assistant news editor for the Journal, is a Journal Sentinel news page designer.

“It was very tense,” said Kenner, who remembers seeing a woman in the bathroom crying in disbelief of the news. “It was not a happy time at all.”

Jamaal Abdul-Alim, who was a part-time night cops reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel, said the atmosphere at that newspaper was apprehensive because people didn't know what to expect since everyone had to re-apply for their jobs.

“Some people were kind of disturbed by the fact that the rumors were floating around before the actual announcement,” said Abdul-Alim, who is a children’s court reporter for the Journal Sentinel.

George Stanley, managing editor of the Journal Sentinel, was a business editor at the Sentinel.

“Everyone was very nervous,” he said. “Because the Sentinel was always considered an underdog, there was a great deal of worrying about what this would mean. No one really thought it was going to happen.”

As circulation and advertising revenue dropped during the post-Persian Gulf War mini-depression and newsprint prices spiked, Stanley said the cost structure of two newspaper staffs became too expensive for a city the size of Milwaukee.

Charles Laszewski, a St. Paul Pioneer Press investigative reporter, was a police reporter for the Pioneer Press before the merger.  The Pioneer Press Dispatch then hired him as a reporter for the “Neighborhood” section.

“I think a lot of people were upset by the news (of the merger),” Laszewski said. “The two papers had pretty strong separate identities.”

Katherine Puchleitner, of St. Paul, subscribed to both the St. Paul Dispatch and the Pioneer Press until they merged.

Puchleitner said she remembers enjoying the evening paper because it had the most recent news.

“The morning paper was like the morning news on TV,” she said.

Puchleitner said at first she thought merging the St. Paul papers was going to be bad.

“It was silly when you think about it,” she said. “The news from the morning just went in the evening paper most of the time anyway.”

Larry Bulinski, of Forest Lake, Minn., said he rarely looked at the Dispatch when it existed because he preferred and subscribed to the Pioneer Press.

Bulinski said he liked the Pioneer Press more because it was the morning paper.

“The afternoon paper was delivered by 3 or 4 p.m. and there wasn't a whole lot of new news in it,” Bulinski said. “And the Dispatch was smaller as far as content.”

Laszewski said the Pioneer Press Dispatch managed to avoid firing anyone during the merger, although it got rid of many employees through attrition and buyouts.

Staff downsizing in Minneapolis and Milwaukee was more painful.

In addition to staff buyouts, the merger of the Star and the Tribune resulted in two rounds of layoffs that eliminated duplication, said Bob Franklin, a Star Tribune reporter who was a city editor for the Tribune when it merged.

“There were a lot of angry people,” he said. “Some felt that they had been lied to. They felt they had gotten some assurances that it wasn't going to happen.”

A similar situation occurred at the Journal Sentinel.

"There was quite a 'brain drain'," Stingl said. "A lot of older people left because they were pushed to leave. They tried to get lots of people to take buyouts. Some were voluntary, but some people were called in and told to go clean out their desk."

Abdul-Alim said he, like many part-time employees at the time, took the buyout. 

“I was still in college at the time and left with the understanding that I would very likely be able to come back once I graduated,” he said.

Kenner said 25 percent of those she worked with at the Journal didn’t get jobs at the merged paper. More than 100 jobs were lost between the two newsrooms, Stingl said.

"People were mad because they didn't get the job they wanted or their friend was canned," Stingl said. "They were almost daring some to quit by putting them on the copy desk."

Along with the loss of fellow employees, a lack of competition can take a toll on merged staffs.

Franklin and Laszewski said those who worked through the mergers that led to the Star Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press set their sights on the paper in their "twin" city once they lost the competing daily newspaper in their respective city.

At the Journal Sentinel, some unhealthy competition continued long after the two newspapers stop being “enemies,” Stingl said.

“The Sentinel people were always fiercely competitive," he said. "There's still people that can't believe they're sitting next to a Journal reporter, but a lot of that has healed over."

For the first few years after the merger, Abdul-Alim said there was a “lingering animosity” between employees from the two newspapers.

“There was just a different way of doing things at the Sentinel,” he said. “The Sentinel preferred hard news leads or clever leads. The Journal was more reflective and analytical, I think, and seen as a bit more sophisticated. It took a while for things to smooth out.”

Laszewski said the same was true when the St. Paul papers merged.

“We just wanted to beat everybody,” he said. “We thought we were better, and those at the Dispatch thought they were better.”

In Milwaukee, journalists said the lack of a second daily newspaper really lowered their competitive spirit.

“You lose the fact that you’re panic stricken that the other paper will beat you,” Stanley said. “That competition, just like in sports, makes people sharper.”

Kenner said she noticed the staff got complacent after the merger because of the lack of competition.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Jamaal Abdul-Alim interviews people at a protest.

“All the beat reporters had a genuine fear of being scooped by the beat reporters on the other side because you knew your editor would ask you: 'Why didn't we have this or that?'” he said. “It made you want to be on top of things.”

Wisconsin and Minnesota journalists said they don’t have to wait for the next print edition to get a story out because their online product allows them to cover news on the spot.

Competition can produce negative effects, said Stingl, explaining that the Journal and the Sentinel had printed half-done stories to make sure they got it in the paper first.

However, Stanley said the Journal Sentinel isn’t without rivals. Along with radio and TV, the newspaper has discovered some new competitors in Web journalists who have beaten it to some major stories. 

Some competition was lost in Wisconsin’s Capitol after the merger due to the downsizing of the number of reporters covering the statehouse for Milwaukee newspapers.

Steven Walters, the Journal Sentinel's Madison bureau chief, was bureau chief for the Sentinel before the merger.

Both the Journal and the Sentinel had a three-person statehouse bureau, he said.

Walters said a statement was made prior to the merger that the new Journal Sentinel would have more reporters in its statehouse bureau than either paper had individually.

"We had four people for two or three years and then lost one position to the main office," he said.

A University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire journalism class content analysis showed no statistically significant difference in the amount of statehouse news in the 2001 Journal Sentinel compared to the 1991 Journal.  Because the Sentinel wasn’t included in the content analysis, the total number of statehouse stories in Milwaukee’s two daily newspapers in 1991 was much greater than the 2001 Journal Sentinel. Therefore, the merger resulted in a substantial drop in statehouse coverage by the Milwaukee print media.

"Mergers are incredibly painful things to go through," Walters said.

The Star Tribune’s statehouse reporting staff is large enough to actually have improved coverage since the merger, Franklin said.

"It's certainly better than when I was doing it," said Franklin, who covered Minnesota’s Capitol for the Associated Press in the mid-1960s and for the Tribune in the late-1960s into the early-1970s.

The Tribune had three full-time reporters covering the statehouse during legislative sessions before the merger.  Now Franklin said the Star Tribune has about twice as many.

"When you don't have two people trying to cover the same thing -- coverage is much broader," he said. "Broadening the coverage gives readers a better package."

However, Franklin said there are probably fewer government stories overall in the Star Tribune.

“The emphasis has shifted from public affairs to entertainment, lifestyle, business and sports,” he said.

Coverage of international stories has also been treated differently in the Journal Sentinel compared to its predecessors.

According to the content analysis, in 2001 the Journal Sentinel had 30 percent fewer international stories on Page One than the Journal had in 1991 -- but that was offset by a 39 percent increase in international stories throughout the Journal Sentinel’s A and Metro sections.

Stingl said the drop in international stories on the front page makes sense for the Journal Sentinel.

"We play to our strengths," he said. "We're not The New York Times or Washington Post. We try to get local and state (stories) on the front."

According to a UW-Eau Claire journalism class survey of 585 professional journalists from all across Wisconsin, the Twin Cities and Duluth, veteran journalists are most likely to note an increase in local coverage: 47 percent of those with more than 15 years at their current job see it on the rise, as do 47 percent of those with 10 to 15 years tenure. The corresponding figure is 30 percent for those in their jobs for 1 to5 years. 

Whether it’s local news or international, Franklin said editors at the Star Tribune make most of the decisions about what types of coverage the newspaper features.

“I never got a sense in any heavy-handed way that ownership tried to influence coverage,” he said.

In 1998, the Star Tribune underwent a different kind of merger when its owner, Cowles Media Company, joined McClatchy Newspapers to form The McClatchy Company.

Franklin said few changes have resulted from the ownership merger.

"In some ways McClatchy is more tight on the business side, but part of that could be a function of these being tougher times," Franklin said.

Franklin said he believes the Star Tribune is a better newspaper because of the mergers its been through. 

"We had more reporters covering more things, and we had more sophisticated coverage," he said. "Reporters also had more time to work on stories than maybe they had before."

Franklin said staff size had become a problem at the Tribune. Similarly, Milwaukee’s papers were understaffed compared to newspapers in similar-sized markets, Stanley said.

Because the merger allowed the Journal Sentinel to have a full staff with a larger news hole, Stanley said he believes the combined paper is “much better than either of its predecessors.”

"At the Tribune, we felt we were being asked to go after all kinds of stories we didn't want to miss but didn't have time to cover them," Franklin said. "We were in a much better situation after the merger in being able to deploy resources more widely. One area was investigative stuff that we never really had time to do well."

The survey showed 64 percent of journalists working at dailies over 100,000 circulation said the quality of their newspaper is rising.

And it’s not just journalists who believe the quality of their major metro newspaper is up.

“I think the paper has improved,” said Puchleitner, a Pioneer Press subscriber. “You can see they're trying very hard … the paper is very well put together.”