Ellen Soeteber has resigned as the Editor in Chief of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Her resignation followed a large voluntary employee buyout at the Post. I know the paper comes in for a lot of criticism here, but I do try to call attention to those times when the paper did a good job.
I think Ms. Soeteber did a good job within the limits of current journalism. By that I mean the faults of the Post are pretty much the faults of journalism today – too often smug, arrogant, unbalanced, inaccurate, and unfair. Certainly she did a much better job than Cole Campbell who championed “public” or “civic” journalism, which in those days just meant the the newspaper was supposed to be an advocate for public and civic improvement, in terms both of running the behind the scenes, and in terms of obvious steps to improve the paper. She focused on improving and expanding the business section and now it’s a great section to read, often the best part of the newspaper. Her stress on local news is the right direction for a newspaper to take in today’s wired world.
From her words in the article it sounds like she just grew tired of dealing with the financial pressures of the job. Newspaper revenues are being undercut by the weakness of the big department stores and car manufacturers who were a large source of advertising, the expansion of advertising in other mediums, and the loss in classified ads to the internet. I don’t think this is the deathknell of newspapers, as there a lot of media that are still around, going strong, just not as dominate as they once were, such as radio or network TV. I don’t think the adverstising and prestigue are ever going back to their old levels, but I think and hope that newspapers will be around for a lot longer.
