Couldn’t fit post-industrial stuff in new paper about The Omaha World Herald. Pasting here.
Finally, the case is a reminder that scholarly focus on new media should not just be about what gets “turned on” by new technology, but also how old processes must be “turned off”: ending the print edition also meant deliberately shutting down various industrial processes associated with the production of the evening print newspaper.
Digital change and related, non-digital changes
Though Anderson et. al (2012) posited that journalism had become “post-industrial” thanks to the unbundling of vertically integrated news organizations as well as the diminishing importance of the physical infrastructure and non-digital objects of news, there has been far more attention paid to new evidence of a post-industrial age than of the decline of industrial processes. While some scholars posit the importance of distribution processes in journalism as both digital and material infrastructure (Braun, 2015), detailed attention to what and whom is impacted on the non-digital side of change has gone largely unnoted. Historical studies of labor in journalism have paid close attention to the role of industrial processes in structuring professional culture (Hardt and Brennan, 1995), but renewed attention is merited in contemporary research.
Bluntly, we know little about the kind of changes in journalism beyond just digital change, but non-digital changes require research, too. For example, when The Christian Science Monitor ended its daily print publication in favor of digital-first and a monthly magazine, the adaptation to a new digital culture received detailed attention (Author; Groves and Brown, 2011), but the steps that would be necessary to rejigger what had been the daily mail delivery of newspapers was not discussed. When The Boston Globe switched newspaper delivery companies and failed to anticipate the chaos caused by a poor understanding of the complicated, journalists were reminded the extent of coordination required for physical newspaper delivery. The non-digital changes at The OWH present additional opportunities for scholarly development.
The Material Unbundling of Physical Stuff
The end of the PM in Omaha also offers the chance to take a close look at not just what has to be “turned on” when processes shift to focus on digitalization, but also what has to be “turned off.” Not only do workers need to prepare to do something new, but old processes also have to change, and in some cases, end. In the case of The OWH, these included industrial processes associated with the production and distribution of the print paper: the process of readjusting the newspaper’s circulation routes, the end of children carriers, and the relaxing of design and production pressures in the newsroom all shifted when the PM edition ended.
Though it certainly made economic sense for The OWH to cut expenses by eliminating additional news production costs, there was also a sociotechnical explanation for why the edition no longer made sense. While there were myriad software choices to choose from as far as planning morning routes, circulation staff said there was no adequate, up-to-date software that was responsive enough to a twice-a-day print delivery circulation process. As the rest of the company’s technology improved, the software used to manage the circulation process aged. Publisher Terry Kroeger noted “It just got more and more complicated to do.” Rather than the helping efficiency of an industrial process, as digitalization is often presumed to do, better technology actually made it more complicated.
Closing down the evening edition could not just happen with a simple off switch. Instead, distribution routines needed to be rethought, from circulation staff to traffic routes. As Mike Reilly, Vice President for News, recalled, publisher Terry Kroeger “would constantly say we can’t have a Boston Globe here on our hands,” a shorthand way to refer to avoiding the embarrassment of completely messing up one of its most fundamental customer service missions — getting the print paper delivered. Print product distribution manager Dennis Cronin explained that it took six months of daily planning with a concentrated team of newsroom leaders to prepare for the end of the PM edition, “There was a group of five of us that met every day at 7:30 in the morning and we’d say how many days we had left and everything we had to do today.” Software that could help plan routes were imperfect, as Cronin noted, “a lot of directions had to change — it would tell you to turn left somewhere but you couldn’t do that at that hour.”
Not only did the routes change, but a massive personnel shift was also required. Evening carriers were daytime workers, while morning newspaper delivery carriers were nighttime workers. Without revealing details about how many shifts were consolidated or closed, Cronin pointed out that it was a massive shift. In another odd historical anachronism, the newspaper also still had approximately thirty “kid carriers” thanks to the afternoon newspaper delivery schedule, which allowed teenagers to complete a delivery route after school. These jobs were eliminated, to the chagrin and sadness of many on staff. “This was a tradition for a lot of readers and the youth carriers helped the relationship between the newspaper and the community…and you can embed the habit with kids,” Connie White, the metro-regional editor noted. The repercussions of ending the practice of children carriers may well have lasting impact; historical research suggests that children carriers facilitated regular customer interaction with newspaper readers and created positive community associations (Stamm, X). Today, the lack of day-to-day physical interaction with news journalists, reporters, and even the disappearance of physical newspaper buildings has been surmised to be a piece of the increasing detachment news consumers feel with journalism (Benton, X).
As such, the odd counter-case of The OWH is a both rebuke and a reminder that infrastructures behind media transitions matter in journalism studies as well –not just digital ones, but physical ones too. But these infrastructures of production and distribution are not to be imagined as pipes or software, but as a mechanism for how people’s labor get structured and restructured, as instantiations of organizational pride, and durable cultural links and connections between producers and consumers. As such, the case provides an important insight into what questions we aren’t asking when we focus too much on the changes associated digitalization rather than the unbundling of industrial process.
