2014 Reports

Moving the Newsroom: Post-Industrial News Spaces and Places

Usher, Nikki

Across the industry, we are seeing a wide-sweeping trend of newsrooms uprooting themselves: A.H. Belo, Gannett, MediaNews, Advance, Gate-House, Cox--small newspapers and large ones alike are listing their newsrooms for sale. Everyone from the private owners of the Syracuse Media Group, to the owners behind the Boston Herald, has moved buildings. This is a countrywide, size-wise trend1 that begs the questions: Is this just one more slap in the face for newsrooms now at their lowest staffing levels since the 1970s? Is it one more sign in line with the circulation declines and revenue slides that signals the inability of newsrooms to get their financial models right? Or perhaps, instead, there is another story to tell here, one embedded with the opportunity to think about a physical move as a way to shed the past and look forward to the future of news through tactile readjustment.