As the Salinas Californian withers, a city yearns to know its stories

When brown water overflowed the banks of the Salinas River in January, flooding hundreds of acres and throwing an untold variety of farmworkers out of jobs, the main newspaper on this agricultural mecca didn’t cowl the story.

Candidates within the November race for mayor additionally went absent from the pages of the 152-year-old information outlet. Ditto non-coverage of a police staffing scarcity so severe that the police chief stated the division won’t have sufficient cops to answer all complaints of theft, fraud, vandalism, prowling and prostitution.

The Salinas Californian missed these tales, understandably, as a result of it employed just one journalist till December. That’s when the paper’s final reporter give up to take a job in TV. The departure marked the newest and maybe last step in a slow-motion unwinding of what was once the principal native information supply on this metropolis of 163,000.

Owned by the most important newspaper writer within the nation, Gannett, the venerable Californian now carries tales from the chain’s USA At present flagship and its different California papers. The one unique content material from Salinas comes within the type of paid obituaries, making demise nearly the one signal of life at an establishment as soon as thought of a must-read by many Salinans.

The dearth of native reporting has drawn complaints from the mayor, a county supervisor and on a regular basis residents who say the general public lifetime of their neighborhood has been diminished by the dearth of a reliable supply of native information.

“As a subscriber, looks as if they’re all gone & all native information has vanished from its pages! The top of an period??” Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo just lately wrote on Twitter, including in one other tweet: “Hoping they have been hiring others quickly as a substitute of giving up on serving our neighborhood.”

Trish Triumpho Sullivan, proprietor of Salinas’ Downtown Guide & Sound, stated the newspaper’s retreat feels particularly ironic within the hometown of John Steinbeck, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist who as soon as labored as a warfare correspondent.

“He understood the ability of a narrative to create constructive change,” stated Sullivan, who has lived in Salinas for greater than 40 years. “With out a native paper in our metropolis, we’ve misplaced the ability to inform the tales of individuals in our metropolis and town itself. We’ve misplaced the ability of storytelling.”

An editor who beforehand helped oversee the Salinas paper from one other Gannett newsroom 300 miles north referred inquiries to the corporate’s company workplace in McLean, Va.

With out native information protection, residents say, Salinas is lacking a trusted info supply to assist body key public coverage debates, corresponding to downtown redevelopment.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions)

“The Californian has deep roots in Monterey County and the better Monterey Bay space,” Lisa Strattan, senior director of the corporate’s Middle for Neighborhood Journalism, stated in a press release. “And we stay dedicated to offering sources to our newsroom whereas counting on our USA At present Community to make sure continued protection.”

The corporate’s company PR workplace acknowledged “staffing challenges in sure newsrooms” however pledged that Gannett is “creating methods to help these markets, together with communities corresponding to Salinas.” Not one of the 57 reporting jobs just lately listed on the chain’s on-line hiring board have been for work in Salinas.

The emptying of the Californian’s newsroom epitomizes the continuing struggles for the American newspaper trade, a shift felt acutely at small-town papers. Newspaper income nationally plummeted 52% from 2002 to 2020, with a lot of the earnings from promoting shifting to Web giants corresponding to Google and Fb. Within the dozen years after 2008, newspaper newsroom employment fell 57%.

Gannett’s downsizing accelerated after the corporate’s 2019 merger with GateHouse Media to kind an organization that owns roughly one-fifth of all each day newspapers in America. Gannett employed 11,200 folks on the finish of 2022, regulatory filings confirmed, a 47% decline from three years prior.

It took years of layoffs and dispirited resignations for the Salinas Californian workers to lastly tick all the way down to zero.

Trish Triumpho Sullivan, proprietor of Downtown Guide & Sound, is among the many enterprise homeowners who mourn the lack of native information. “We’ve misplaced the ability of storytelling,” Sullivan says.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions)

The Californian’s newsroom buzzed with about 35 journalists in 1999 — and never simply exhausting information reporters however writers specializing in sports activities and options and a separate opinion division, a former editor recalled. The paper staffed the most important beats and sorted the general public’s enterprise, from the Metropolis Council and native faculties to crime and downtown improvement.

When President Clinton made an election-season cease in 1996, as an example, his marketing campaign didn’t decide up the $50,000 in time beyond regulation for Salinas police and sheriff’s deputies. The paper dogged the White Home till the president’s reelection marketing campaign coughed up the cash, recalled then-editor Catharine Hamm, including: “That was such candy justice.”

With promoting, manufacturing and different operations included, the newspaper employed about 120 folks. However when the Nice Recession hit, advert gross sales swooned and the workers shrank by a couple of third. By 2016, the paper had gone from six days per week in print to a few. The next 12 months, it moved out of its historic downtown constructing, graced to today by a mural of Steinbeck superimposed over the Californian’s entrance pages.

Nonetheless, with a handful of reporters and a photographer, the Californian managed to jot down about challenges corresponding to housing and homelessness. Reporter Kate Cimini chronicled the rising price of demise, most poignantly with the story of a onetime Salinas activist, terminally sick, who needed to increase cash to pay for her personal impending funeral.

The newspaper additionally may encourage, in a single occasion with information of an area 14-year-old who turned the second-youngest participant to signal knowledgeable contract with Main League Soccer; in one other, with the story of a Zapoteco farmworker who on the age of 58 earned a university diploma from Cal State Monterey Bay.

The Salinas Californian newsroom as soon as buzzed with reporters. However by 2016, amid trade woes, the workers had shrunk by a 3rd. The next 12 months, the newspaper moved out of its historic downtown constructing.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions)

Nonetheless, by final 12 months, the Californian’s workers had been gutted. As reporters left for different papers or received out of the enterprise altogether, there was no transfer to exchange them. By then, the paper’s print circulation — 11,000 on Saturdays a decade in the past — had slipped to about 2,500.

Salinas shouldn’t be the primary metropolis the place Gannett has let a newsroom wither. The weekly Mt. Shasta Information has no full-time native reporters, counting on freelancers and a Gannett each day in Redding, one of many chain’s editors stated. Axios reported in January that the St. Cloud Occasions in Minnesota, after 93 years in publication, had misplaced its final reporter.

Journalists inside Gannett have seethed as the corporate devoted cash to different priorities, together with compensation for CEO Mike Reed of almost $8 million and a plan to purchase again as much as $100 million of the corporate’s inventory.

“The journalists at these papers are at their wit’s finish,” stated Jon Schleuss, president of the NewsGuild, a unit of the Communications Employees of America. “The way in which that you simply run and develop a information enterprise is you use native journalists who cowl tales that the neighborhood cares about.”

The erosion of the Californian’s native workers additionally sapped its sister publication, El Sol, a Spanish-language outlet that translated the paper’s work. Gannett quietly shut down El Sol final September.

What occurs when a city loses its native information?

In Salinas, it’s meant highschool athletes misplaced a marquee platform. The struggles and triumphs of the immigrants who labor within the area’s storied lettuce and strawberry fields have gone unreported. No extra shared celebration of neighborhood occasions, or stirring protection of the crowds displaying up hungry at meals banks in a area teeming with agricultural bounty.

The listing of lacking tales solely grew in latest weeks: an unidentified man run over and killed by a prepare in early March; a court docket order in opposition to a labor contractor to pay $460,000 in again wages and penalties to farmworkers; a dispute over whether or not the Saturday shutdown of Major Road is hurting companies.

With out a sturdy native information report, “there’s a void within the each day lifetime of the neighborhood,” says Dennis Donohue, a former Salinas mayor, “not having that constructive presence.”

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions)

Sullivan, the bookstore proprietor, launched a petition opposing the road closure, saying it has price her and different retailers dearly. Within the outdated days, the Californian would have lined the problem and sure printed her letter of protest, she stated. However no extra.

“It’s all of the native happenings that aren’t lined; the watchdog on native authorities and the politicians that’s lacking,” Sullivan stated. “Nobody is conflicts of curiosity. They might be operating wild. … Now we’re left studying the tweets of people that go to Metropolis Council conferences.”

Dennis Donohue, a former Salinas mayor who heads an incubator for agricultural know-how, stated the neighborhood is lacking an goal and trusted info supply to assist body necessary public coverage debates. “There’s a void within the each day lifetime of the neighborhood,” Donohue stated, “not having that constructive presence.”

Locals have turned to different shops. Many stated they now look primarily to the Monterey County Weekly for information. The Monterey Herald, owned by the rival MediaNews Group, covers county information and a few Salinas tales. KSBW-TV focuses on the Central Coast and presents highlights of highschool sports activities.

A gaggle of journalists from the area based Voices of Monterey Bay in 2017 to attempt to fill the hole. Its tales, although rare, generally take a look at weighty points such because the hurt “pesticide drift” poses for weak residents. The outlet’s early protection of COVID-19, translated into Spanish, attracted many readers and proved the persevering with excessive demand for high quality info, stated Claudia Meléndez Salinas, a Voices founder and former reporter on the Californian.

However Salinans stated not one of the different information shops give attention to their neighborhood with the depth the Californian as soon as did.

Per the brand new regular, the one native information within the Californian on a latest Wednesday was 5 paid obituaries. “I’m not being macabre, however if you happen to ask lots of people, that’s the most important cause they might purchase the paper,” stated Jim Helm, a longtime swim coach. “However Salinas is the county seat. It’s an enormous city. I don’t know why they’ll’t provide you with one thing extra.”

Mary Duan, a former editor of the Weekly, stated its exhausting to know what tales are being missed as a result of reporters aren’t on the beat, asking questions, submitting public information requests.

“They are saying democracy dies in darkness,” Duan stated. “And we’re in completely darkish instances in Salinas.”