The few still working from the 2013 Pulitzer-winning staff

Disturbing picture of newspapers today

This photo of the Denver Post when it won a Pulitzer Prize five years ago sums up newspapers’ problems in a nutshell.

It shows who still is on the staff 5 years later.

Desperate financially, newspapers cut the most expensive personnel . . . and the most talented.

Joe Kiefer sent this photo to Mark Price, who relayed it to me.

This picture is worth 1 million words.

The 2013 Pulitzer was for the Post’s coverage of the Aurora, Colorado movie theater mass shooting that killed 12 and wounded 58 others.

This year the Post laid off 30, one-third of its remaining staff. A year ago 26 were sent packing. Two years ago 12 were shown the door. The combined total is only two short of the number of casualties at the Aurora theater that brought the Post newspapers’ highest honor.

Newspaper quality is being aborted, piece by piece, in an effort to avoid going belly-up.

Kiefer left Ol’ Blue Walls in 2007 for the Columbus Dispatch. He was a super copy editor for the BJ for 12 years.

Kiefer is married to Debby Stock Kiefer, who took the 2006 buyout exodus to care for her ailing parents after 28 years at 44 E. Exchange Street.

Kiefer and Price both came to the Beacon from the Canton Repository. Price provided the BJ with a great historian with his articles about the Akron area of long ago. His writing and Bob Dyers’ Ohio Columnist of the Year work remain shining hallmarks despite a decimated staff.