Those of us who are daily readers of the San Jose Mercury News have had a little more than a year to observe the newspaper since Dean Singleton and his company MediaNews bought the northern California newspapers formerly owned by Knight Ridder.

It is obvious a great deal has changed.

Some of the changes have been mostly benign.

For instance, the crossword and other puzzles have moved to the inside back of the daily classified section. I suspect this move saves a bit of newsprint a day which helps save a job somewhere at the paper. This change does no real harm.

Other changes are more harmful. There have been layoffs and resignations. Well-known bylines have disappeared.

The worst thing about what has happened to the Mercury News is what we do not know. With 50% fewer people in the newsroom there are countless enterprise stories that are being missed. Sadly there is not way to know about them.

Some of the changes are very apparent. The newspaper has eliminated the weekly opinion section Perspective, the Monday paper is down to a very skimpy four sections. The story selection for the front page of the A section is all over the place. Stories on page 1A range from things that seem to have no news value to interesting piece that would have been great leads for the Local section or an inside feature section.

On Sunday Oct. 7 almost 50% of the front page was devoted to a blurred picture of a single college football player. Almost 14% of the same page was used to promote content inside the newspaper and another 4.7% of the page was an ad. On that Sunday barely a third of the front page was devoted to front page news.

These changes have occurred gradually over the last year. I had not thought about their total impact until a few weeks ago when Ron Beach, a former classified ad director at the Mercury News, emailed that he had been in the bay area for a visit and had read the Mercury News for a few days. He asked me: “What is your take regarding the Mercury News of today vs. a few years ago?”

I responded to Ron’s question. Then I forwarded my comments to the private email list I maintain and asked people for their thoughts. I had about a dozen replies which I have reproduced below. All of them are from former SJMN employees and several are from well-known journalist. Some dealt with specific content that has changed, like arts coverage. Other took a broader, more philosophical approach to the direction the paper has taken.

Beyond that, it is hard to generalize about the comments from my far-flung correspondents. Since some of the comments I received refer to what I wrote when I responded to Ron I’ll start with my thoughts, slightly edited:

I…think the paper has been diminished in a number of smaller ways, which you might not notice if you had not been reading it daily for a few years.

For instance, the Local section on Monday is almost always full of stories picked up form the weekly Silicon Valley Community Newspapers. These stories tend to be soft, a little out-of-date and not especially well-written.

The Sunday TV book is now a tabloid and the content has been radically reduced. Only three and four star movies are listed and the daily highlights are down to almost nothing.

The number of features in the Sunday Arts/Entertainment/LifeStyle section has been reduced. The Books pages are down by about half.

Especially notable is the disappearance of the Perspective section.

Another thing I have spotted is increased dependence on the NYTimes and other wires for coverage of national and international events.

I think the story selection on page 1A has been very different than it was a few years ago. Even if you discount stories that are down right silly on the front page—the champion hot dog eater for instance—the news deemed worthy of out front treatment have changed. Most days the front page is very local and significant national and international events are either below the fold or inside the section.

Also, page A2 has turned into a jump page… the features from page A2 have been moved to page A3. I found this change a bit amusing since Joe Natoli and his minions negotiated with the folks at Fry’s for about a year to get this (page 3A) space back so the newsroom could use it as a second front page. The idea was to give the front of the A section a newsier feel. Also, page 3A was sometimes used for an “In Depth” feature, which no longer has a home in the A section.

Here are the responses I received form people on my email list, in no particular order. I have included some minor info about each of the writers to provide context.

This is from a former Mercury News journalist who still keeps a close eye on what is happening here:

“Given the ascension of the Internet as a source of news for national and international news, and given the dominance of Craig’s List and Monster.com etc. for employment advertising, there is no question that papers like the Mercury News must make local news their central mission. There is no other business model that can keep local and regional papers alive. This has begun to happen on news at the Merc. But the paper is still spending huge amounts of money to send sports reporters and columnists to far-flung events that are covered as well or better by national outlets. Better that money should be spent on improving the quality and breadth of the local news report which — although it is now central — remains relatively shallow. Some fine work has been done on local issues, but not nearly enough to make the paper a must-read for people locally. Unless the Mercury News can do this — that is, make itself so vital to local and regional residents that they feel that have to subscribe to it — it will continue in its death spiral. This also means making smarter choices about what goes on page one. There should be an engaging, light read in the mix every day, but is should be a secondary story, not the centerpiece. With more resources focused on local news, there would be plenty of competition for lead stories every day that readers would find important and compelling — and a reason to justify paying for a printed product.”

I think these comments are right on the money. Metropolitan newspapers—like the Mercury News—survived for decades by meeting readers’ needs for national and international news, big-time sports and classified ads. All three of these are now delivered faster and better by the internet.

The Mercury News has done a great job lately on some important local stories—like the “resignation” of county schools chief Colleen B. Wilcox. This content is compelling and because of it I find myself taking longer to read the paper many days. On Sunday October 7 I had an hour long yakathon with Bob Schied, a former Mercury News automotive ad sales star. Bob noted many of the changes in the paper but he also noted that there are many very good feature stories which he finds worth reading.

This was emailed to me by another former Mercury News journalist:

You made some interesting observations about the current MN. The biggest loss in my opinion is Perspective.

Bringing 1B news onto the 1A spot has good and bad days. Today (9/21/07), for instance, the biggest story, the lead story, is the reopening of Original Joe’s Restaurant???? This is the best that can be done in the heart of Silicon Valley?

You should read Sports. The MN has excellent sports writers. Ann Killion is terrific, everything she writes, and Mark Purdy brings in years of experience. Even if his opinion is sometimes not so bright (see, I didn’t say stupid). Mark Emmons is top notch.

So, in all that is said and done, the Sports section is probably the best written and best covered of all the sections.

B section suffers. The reason for this is the small news hole for B, and the fact that the main writers are no longer there. Hardly any staff coverage of the neighborhoods. That is where the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers come in.

I don’t agree with your take on those writers however. Some are former MN staffers; some are college kids getting their first experience on a newspaper. I might add they make exactly half of what the MN editorial people are being paid, and they do a good job. Without Community Newspapers, there would be little or no neighborhood coverage. So, you are wrong there, Lou.

Features and Special Sections are struggling. Again, few writers and I might add, fewer copy editors. I noticed a Food story that mentioned a restaurant was off San Thomas (sic) Expressway. A more careful copy edit would have caught that the expressway is San Tomas.

These are the kinds of things that creep into the newspaper every day.

I don’t like the new Biz section. It’s too rah-rah looking for my taste.

I should be the last person to mention bad copy editing, considering the number of errors I make. But I agree that there are more small errors creeping into the paper. Copy editor shifts are expensive and I am sure they have been cut to save money. I agree about Ann Killion and Mark Purdy. They are fine writers. I always enjoy Purdy’s “better mail than jail columns.” I also remember a column Killion wrote years ago about covering a Super Bowl with her practically newborn baby in tow.

The Business section is a dilemma for me. It is glitzy looking, which I think sometimes detracts from the seriousness of the subjects covered. Also, it contains some content that seems to have no connection to Business.

Some examples of this are “The List” in the Sunday paper:
“Top Videos on YouTube for week…”
“Top 10 song downloads on iTunes for…”
“Top 10 DVDs on Amazon for week…”

There are similar list in the daily business section. They are interesting but I do not understand how the constitute “Business” content.

These comments are from a former business-side senior manager:

… I sense a lack of place (Silicon Valley) and lack of coverage that used to be our mantra: The Capital of Silicon Valley. And that permeated into everything: business, main, lifestyle features, the internet, all the things that made this place truly unique or as, Jerry Ceppos used to say, “the capital that is changing the world.”

But, the truth is since the dot com bust, this market isn’t really changing the world much anymore. We were going to be a world class newspaper. The New York Times could have Wall Street. The Washingon Post could have government but we would have Silicon Valley.

I think they’re doing a pretty good job of covering the few start ups that are making it a go and the Googles and Ciscos of the world, and certainly the internet, and it’s probably current market conditions that are affecting coverage so much.

Not to mention a war in Iraq and a president with the lowest approval rating in this century.

Also, I think the killing off of Nuevo Mundo and Viet Mercury was a long-term strategic mistake. I know they were difficult to sell ad wise, but it will take them all that much longer and cost them a lot more to get back into that market, than if they could have sustained them over the long haul. With 50% of the market not white, and the internet having captured the youth market, the market viability, long term, of an English language newspaper gets smaller and smaller.

I applaud the new editors’ open “remake the Mercury News” effort… I wish them well, and although the loss of Perspective and the TV book were real diminishments, I’m sure the groaning was heard louder in the newsroom than anywhere. Let’s hope the market, and the resources come back but I think it will be a very long time.

I’m sure you’ve noted I’ve alternated between “us” and “them” throughout this missive. I’ve been gone a long time but still hold an affectionate place in my heart for the Mercury New.

This is from another former business-side senior manager:

…Knight Ridder was an employee oriented company and took great pride in publishing great newspapers. This was true until Tony took over and continued, in part, through his tenure particularly in San Jose. The changes in the news product seem severe given that history. In other similar markets, much of what is being cut never existed. From my post San Jose experience, what we had was lavish by comparison. They truly were the good old days.

I think there is more than a little truth is the statement that “what we had was lavish by comparison” to other newspapers. Mercury News circulation ranked about 30th in the country for much of the last 25 years. Yet, we were ranked as one of the 10 best newspapers in the country. During David Yarnold’s tenure as executive editor he set a goal to make the Mercury News the best newspaper on the west coast. For a time, especially when the Los Angles Times hit the skids, I thought we had made that goal.

This is from an ad side manager who left the newspaper a decade ago:

…the only thing that is disturbing to me so far is arts coverage. There are fewer critics, and I notice Rich Scheinin (who I LOVE to read) in more often, and Karen D’Souza is doing more, or so it seems. Also, freelancer, Colin Seymour is back, and that is good. The “Picks” the other day were relegated to the BOTTOM of a page, which was odd, but it looks like they are sqeezing everything sooooo tight, that there is no eye for design.

The other offense is that Sports was combined with Class. yech! The combination of A&E and other features is less offensive, as it strikes me as a throwback to the former “Living” section that we all knew and loved…..that said, they should rename those sections, so that it doesn’t look like A&E is getting the short shrift that it truly is getting!!!

Several of my old friends from Classified sent me their thoughts. The first of them:

Truthfully, I find very little that I care about reading anymore. I miss the Perspective section on Sunday - it was one of the things that I did read.

This is a somewhat minor observation in the scheme of things, but I read the Crime Report daily, and San Jose hasn’t even been listed there for almost 3 weeks. However, Campbell and Los Gatos are there just about every day. I would like to know if there is something going on in my neighborhood.

I aslo miss the brief summaries on the TV page about programs that are on that evening. Who cares what the call letters are??!!

So basically, I scan the newspaper - don’t read the Sports section, but do read Action Line, the Obits, Ann Landers, and do the crosswored puzzle. Guess my favorite section is the Valley section.

It also seems like there are more ads than ever on the page….. Content on gone downhill in my opinion.

And from a former classified department manager:

Being from the advertising side, I’ve always tried to make sure there was a very delineated line between advertising and journalism. I’ve noticed the decline in well-written news stories, but I’ve also noticed a decline in advertising quality (just gimme and ad–who cares where it is or what it looks like), so I feel we have to be fair there.

Newspapers were designed to be the eyes of the community. There was no other way to get reliable information, especially in-depth. We can no longer do that because the community now has choices that are, quite frankly, more in-depth, more focused, updated more quickly, and more available than waiting for something on your porch to show up (or in your driveway) each day.

The MN is so small now; it’s not worth even paying 35 cents to a lot of people anymore. You can purchase whole magazines with less advertising and more information devoted to what your specific interest for just a few pennies more and perceive a better value. (Now don’t gag, but even the National Enquirer has more news with less ads for a better price and is almost as much newsprint–with color on every page!)

There will always be paper-type products for people to read, but the day of the daily newspaper is numbered and I believe faster than any of us wish to believe. There simply is not enough revenue to support a daily newspaper because we can no longer offer the advertiser the advantage of being the best focus for their customer. As long as squeezing the last dollar out of the customer is the focus instead of serving the community, we’re doomed to fail.

Finally, (and this is really painful for me to say), but I think that the new place for ongoing advertising is going to be updated lists of businesses, like the yellow pages, where people go when they want a service, it will list the usual name, address, type of business; but will include web addresses so people can find what they want. These will come out reliably and be very regionally focused. Real news will be audible and Internet only. Niche news that can change quickly with public needs will survive, but old-time newspapers are a thing of the past.

From a front-line employee in classified:

…in my opinion I noticed right away the content of the entire paper got
BORING - BORING - BORING.

My neighbors…all know I worked at the Merc for almost 30 years and so they always feel the need to tell me their opinions as well. They also say it is boring and little is written about what is really going on in the S.J. area such as crime and useful info we should be aware of. I always enjoyed getting up in the morning and having my cup of coffee while reading the paper.. no more.

The biz/tech section is totally not what a lot of us are interested in reading. I used to read Business but now I never read the new section and of course Classified is a sorry section of about 3-4 pages normally. It’s almost embarrassing but probably not much can be done about it since so many use other avenues now such as Craigs list. Who can blame them when it’s free?

And finally, from another classified department front-line employee who has a way with a phrase:

How has the paper diminished? Well, I think news coverage as a whole in the Bay Area has diminished because, with the Bay Area Singleton papers all carrying each others’ stories, most of us are reading the same stories now, no matter where we live.

Losing the Perspective section is emblematic of the Mercury’s new direction. It was the one section I saved aside each week until I had some quiet time to devote to reading its often thoughtful articles.

The other big thing is that the local news coverage has really gone downhill. Before the sale, I could rely on the Merc to keep me informed about local news. But now there are lots of stories picked up from other papers that really don’t matter to someone in San Jose. For instance, while it is sad to hear that there was a one-alarm house fire in Castro Valley, I’m not really sure how it serves readers in San Jose to read about it.

Several months ago, several people wrote letters to the editor, published in the Saturday Merc, about some local events that even USA Today and the Wall Street Journal had covered, but not the Mercury News.

The trend of picking up stories from other newspapers and news services extends to every section of the paper. Even the Food section, which I could previously count on to carry good recipes geared to what is currently in season in our region, is now carrying more stories picked up from elsewhere.

I’m not happy with the new TV listings section, but I do understand the business decision behind it. I’m not much of a TV viewer, so it doesn’t much matter to me.

Particularly nettlesome are the quality control problems. I see so many mistakes in the articles that I think surely no one is proofreading them anymore. Also, I see more problems such as a note that a story is continued on page 2B, for example, when in actuality it continues on page 4B. (Sometimes, the rest of the story is nowhere to be found!)

I still think the people putting out the Merc are good, talented people. It’s just that there are fewer of them, so the resources that were previously devoted to putting out a top-notch paper are no longer there. All in all, the Merc is a shell of its former self. It’s very sad to see such a fine paper descend so rapidly. I feel the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of Dean Singleton. He once called the Merc the “crown jewel” of the Knight Ridder papers. Well, he seems to have broken the crown into parts which he’s put into a pawn shop.

I still expect that within 5 years, the Merc building will be sold and the remaining reporters and some outside sales people will be relocated to a floor in a highrise in downtown San Jose.

I also predict that the recent section “consolidations” (i.e., cuts) will lead to even more subscription cancellations (though I still feel a tremendous sense of loyalty to the Merc employees, so I’m keeping my subscription going.)

The San Jose “Mercury News”? Perhaps people don’t realize it’s really more like the San Jose Argus now.

…I felt the Mercury reached a new low yesterday (Sept. 24, 2007). I saw a headline in the business section, front page, about the thefts of GPS devices being on the rise in Milpitas. Well, I live near Milpitas, so my attention was grabbed and I started to read.

As I started to read the article, it talked about evens in Boston, Philadelphia and the Washington, D.C., area, so I quickly realized I was reading a wire service report and not an article written by a Mercury News reporter. I looked at the top, and sure enough, it said “Associated Press.”

But then, about half way into the article, it suddenly started talking about Milpitas. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never read an article that talked in the same breath about events in Boston, Philadelphia, and Milpitas. (Milpitas?!) So I thought, “I bet you that at the end of this article, it’ll have a little blurb about ’so-and-so from the Mercury News added to this report.’” And sure enough, such a blurb was at the end of the article. So now it looks as though the Mercury has been reduced to purloining articles from the AP, slapping on a headline dealing with something local, and adding some lines to the story to “personalize” it in the local sense. Pretty cheap if you ask me. (I realize it’s a longstanding tradition to take wire service reports and add to them, but this case was different.) Pretty sad.

All of the comments here are from former Mercury News employees. They were all proud of the paper when they worked there. It is not surprising that they have noticed the changes.

But non-employee readers are also not happy.

I have spent a lot of time in the last six weeks with doctors, nurses and other medical types. Many of them know I am a Mercury News retiree and they were not bashful about telling me how unhappy they are as readers. The same is true of the members of my old white guy posse and the folks I talk with at Peet’s Coffee Shop in Willow Glen during my daily stop.