On Friday, some 100 people will be walking out from the newsrooms of the Knight Ridder-owned Philadelphia newspapers, the
Inquirer and
Daily
News -- those who have accepted buy-out offers designed to reduce the
staff. Among those taking the buy-outs will be two of five employees of
the research department (library) that serves the papers' news staff.
There has been discussion and rumor in the last week that the library
might be pretty much gutted -- reduced to a staff of two, with the
survivors limited to archiving duties and reporters left to fend for
themselves when they had research needs. But in a cost-cutting meeting
held this afternoon, newspaper executives decided to accept the
decision of two library staffers out of five to accept the buy-out
offer, and retain the library in a reduced state, according to
Fred Mann, general manager of the papers' website,
Philly.com, who attended the meeting.
The three remaining news librarians will have as part of their duties
making sure that reporters know how much they can do for themselves
online using the Internet and paid database services. "Of course, with
only five people in a news library serving more than 600 journalists,
most everyone has learned to effectively fend for themselves long ago,"
Mann says. (Back in 1995, the newspapers' library employed 15 people.)
Plans are for newsroom workers at the papers to be given extensive
training in online research so that they can be more self-reliant when
it comes to research. The Computer Assisted Reporting staff also will
be augmented.
Obviously, the move is controversial. A key argument: Without news librarians, could
Woodward and
Bernstein have done their Watergate series?
I think one thing it points to is
the need for journalists everywhere to beef up their research skills; they no
longer can count on working for a news organization that has an
adequately staffed research department. And journalism schools will
need to be turning out students who likewise can fend for themselves in
doing research.
