By: Pauline Dulang, Reporter
DOWNTOWN OMAHA, Neb. – Expert journalists acknowledge the newspaper’s expiration date and are ready to adjust to the future of journalism.
Former KETV News Director, Rose Ann Shannon, said we are witnessing some of the best journalism in our lives right now. She said losing the Omaha World-Herald will come with serious ramifications, but deciding whether or not those consequences are significant is ultimately up to the people.
Since Fall 2021, Alden Global Capital, a New York-based hedge fund notorious for severe cost cutting and widespread layoffs at its newspapers, has been unsuccessful in buying out publisher Lee Enterprises.
Lee Enterprises is the publisher for 90 newspapers in 26 states, including Nebraska’s Omaha World-Herald.
They made their first mark in 2020 when they purchased a 6% stake of Lee Enterprises. This was shortly after their $633 million purchase of Tribune Publishing, the Chicago-based newspaper chain.
Flatwater Free Press Editor and former Omaha World-Herald, Reporter Matthew Hansen, said Alden is the worst of the worst when it comes to American newspaper chain ownership. He said although Lee Enterprises is not as bad as Alden, they’re not much better either.
Last month, Lee Enterprises laid off two of its top editors. The Omaha World-Herald Guild quickly responded in a tweeted letter saying, “How do we work for a company that lays off [editors] and just paid [Lee Enterprise] CEO Kevin Mowbray a 1 point 1-million-dollar bonus?”
“The idea print journalism in it of itself, yeah, that has an expiration date. Reporting and writing, that stuff is timeless,” said Hansen.
The Omaha World-Herald has the highest newspaper circulation in Nebraska, distributing nearly 98,000 copies a day on average. However, younger generations think newspapers can be a bit of an inconvenience.
UNO senior Michelle Pham said, “You can take your newspaper on the go, but there are so many pages. You have to flip through them and you have to find what you’re looking for, but with social media and the internet, you just google it!”
Michelle relies on Twitter’s algorithm to sort through content most relevant to what she interacts with.
“You’ll probably see print go first. They’ll keep their online presence. What happens after that? You don’t know. It’s happening in real time and it’s happening very quickly,” said former KETV News director Shannon.
She said rather than this being the demise of print journalism, it’s simply a shift to new mediums.
