Peter Krupa

The sky is always about to fall upon the newsrooms of America these days. It is told that way because, well, they tell us. Newspapers decide the narrative of the story, and the narrative whenever someone buys a newspaper or downsizes a newsroom is, “woe is us, journalism will suffer,” etc.

What they don’t tell us is how absurdly bloated, wasteful, and inefficient are the nation’s major dailies. Puffed up with a somewhat messianic vision of their place in society and accustomed to having something of a monopoly on information, the nation’s top-tier journalists demand salaries and expense accounts to match.

Recently my co-worker sent a story - researched, written, done - to one of the three major dailies in the U.S. Later he got on the horn with the editor, and the editor said, yeah, that’s a fantastic story, but we don’t buy stories.

“I haven’t been to Costa Rica,” he said. “But I would like to go. Would you fix for me if I came down to do the story?”

So an interesting - but not crucial - story the paper could have bought for $300 will now cost the newspaper something like $4,000, plus whatever large salary they’re paying their full-time reporter.

That, my friends, is a bad business decision.

Or take the case of another of my co-workers. He sent a freelance piece to a newspaper who, for the sake of anonymity, I will refer to only as the Miami H. The editor again said: Great story!

But you know what?

It’s such a great story we’re just going to send our own reporter down there. Besides that, our freelance budget for the year is cashed out, but we still have a lot of money in the travel budget.

Once again, instead of $300, they will now pay about $4,000, and probably get a worse story.

Does this make sense? Only if you have a sense of entitlement!

Maybe I’m just bitter because I missed the gravy train of fat staff writer paychecks and velvet-lined expense accounts. Could be.

Either way, that gravy train is slowing down for its final stop, and everyone off. It’s high time newspapers found a different business model and stopped dicking around the world as if “general interest news” was really a legitimate strategy.

I mean, I’m sorry, the nation’s newsrooms can do that if they want. Just don’t ask me for sympathy when the new owner casts his beady eye on editorial.