The Omaha World-Herard

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yesterday was not a good day in this town or
this state. It got out that Henry Cordis, the longtime
chief investigative reporter for the Omaha World Herald, is leaving,
not retiring, leaving to where unclear His paper is in
financial peril. Lee Enterprises, the publicly traded newspaper mall in Davenport, Iowa,

(00:22):
which bought The World Herald from Warren Buffett five years ago,
has seen its stock price fall from forty dollars a
share three years ago to five dollars a share today.
Now why did Buffett sell? We thought he loved the
place because he can add and subtract. He made more
money financing the sale of the paper than publishing it,

(00:43):
and that is the definition of an indictment. But at
least the best reporters were still in the building until now.
You are welcome to differ with the World Herald's editorial stances,
but there is no arguing the value of a strong, influential,
independent newspaper. It is the lifeblood of a community. The

(01:03):
World Herald was all of that and more. Its leaders
Clarion big things, stadiums, performing arts centers. The zoo is
actually named after a former World Herald publisher. Strong newspapers
and talented reporters like Henry do important work for each day.
They comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Great newspapers,

(01:27):
like great radio stations, bring to life those immortal words
that adorn the north side of our state capital. The
salvation of the state lies in the watchfulness of the citizenry.
All of us in the media game share that stake.
TV stations do investigative reporting. Talk radio instantly connects the
people and the issues. On air, thinkers move large numbers

(01:50):
of us to act on important issues. But radio listeners
and TV viewers need us to do things other than
investigative journalism or comp comprehensive analysis. Newspaper types are far
better equipped to deliver that kind of stuff. It was
Henry who did the big above the fold on Sunday stories,

(02:12):
school superintendents who have extramarital affairs, morons running public pension
funds off the cliff, sexual predators walking the halls of
junior highs, and how in less than ten years we're
going to run out of energy. But if the reporters
who do that stuff leave or are downsized, merged, purged,

(02:32):
or replaced, who really loses. What happens to the Salvation?
Only the leadership of Lee Enterprises knows of this Omaha
icon's fate, but know this they own the Lincoln Journal
Star too. That paper once competed with the World Herald,
and the community benefited from that competition greatly. Not anymore

(02:55):
to think LEE will not continue deploying an army of
bean counters across both buildings seeking out overlap, non essential
duplication among reporters, columnists, editors, everybody would be to ignore reality.
If your Lee, why do you need two competing papers
within fifty miles of each other covering many of the
same things state government, agriculture, DC Husker sports. When one

(03:20):
staff can do both, you wouldn't. You won't, especially when
your company is lugging hundreds of millions in debt around
every day. In the last ten years, nearly two thousand
newspapers have disappeared in this country. Publicly traded newspaper companies
have lost two thirds of their value in the last
five years. How and why, Well, it's a long epitaph.

(03:43):
They were slow to go. Digital advertisers fled to Google, Twitter,
and Facebook, and the percentage of subscribers under age fifty
can be counted. On one hand, the business model of
seek and find advertising is outdated. The Wensday grocery specials
for decad a cash cow for papers gone, and the
classified ads this section are about extinct. Remove Husker sports

(04:08):
from the paper and there isn't much left. Ironically, that's
one subject for which the paper isn't needed. Plenty of
places for Husker fans to get the daily scoop on
Big Red, but the school board, county board, city hall,
oppd state government who will be afflicting those folks whose
lives with Henry Cordis's departure, just got a lot more comfortable.

(04:33):
When any business contracts, it begins to disappear, and then
it's gone, and after a while we won't know what
we're missing