This column, however, focuses on the Salinas Californian, a 152-year-old newspaper/website with a long history of watchdog journalism. At one time the Californian had a staff of 120, including 35 writers and photographers. That editorial number in 2023 is now zero. The Californian’s lone reporter quit in December and has not been replaced. Print circulation has dropped from 11,000 to 2,500. The Californian is owned by the largest newspaper publisher in the country, Gannett, which has continued to focus on cost cutting to stay alive. When that doesn’t work which it hasn’t at the Californian there are not many choices other than to stop publishing or sell at a bargain price. Think about this scenario: how can any media company keep readers when there are no reporters or editors to publish news? One day the Californian published five paid obituaries as their news coverage.
This California newspaper has no reporters left dailyrepublic.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailyrepublic.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The 152-year-old Californian employed only one journalist until December. That’s when the paper’s last reporter quit to take a job in TV. The departure marked the latest and perhaps final step in a slow-motion unwinding of what used to be the principal local news source in Salinas, a city of 163,000 that was the hometown of John Steinbeck, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist who once worked as a war correspondent.