Bud Shaw exit 433,000th newspaper job lost in 28 years!

Among the eight veteran reporters, writers and editors who took voluntary buyout offers from Cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer this week were sports columnist Bud Shaw, Washington bureau chief Steve Koff and sports editor Mike Starkey.

Bud Shaw, #433,000

Bud Shaw covered more than a dozen Super Bowls and World Series, eight Masters golf tournaments, the PGA and U.S. Open golf championship, six Olympic Games, the Ryder Cup, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup Finals, the Daytona 500, the NCAA Final Four and the U.S. Open tennis tournament.

But that’s irrelevant in today’s crumbling newspapers era.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania graduate and Philadelphia native Shaw came to the PD in 1991 from The National Sports Daily where he worked in Chicago and Detroit. 

His career includes newspapers in Atlanta, San Diego, Philadelphia, New Jersey and western Pennsylvania.

It’s a sad time when a Bud Shaw walks out the door because newspaper owners didn’t get ahead of the infant Internet and, with all their reporting resources, own it. 

No one who toddled onto the Internet to write could have matched all that newspaper talent.

Newspaper employment went from 458,000 in 1990 to 25,000 today. That’s an astounding loss of 433,000 jobs . . . a 95% freefall!

During that same time frame, internet publishing and online broadcasting rose from 30,000 to more than 200,000. A 433,000 loss and a 170,000 gain means 260,000 more people out of work. 

Oh, many migrated to TV newsrooms, which have more reporters than newspapers for the first time in history.

Is this good for democracy? Hell, no! The Washington Post puts it bluntly and accurately. 

Go to

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-crisis-in-journalism-has-become-a-crisis-of-democracy/2018/04/11/a908d5fc-2d64-11e8-8688-e053ba58f1e4_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.dc902ab1fcfb  

to read it. 

There are too many Bud Shaws in this equation to benefit America. There are so few left to catch the politicians and businesses raping America.

Politicians and businesses will have a field day without newspapers being the guarddogs for democracy.