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I suppose everyone has had, or will have, their own moment when the Great Recession really hits home--when it becomes something they take personally rather than as an abstraction.
So far my wife and I have been lucky. Mary-Jo's workplace is largely dependent on state government funding, but the agency has found ways to trim expenses without having to cut professional staff. And writing projects have continued to fall into place for me, despite the depressing news emanating from many book publishing quarters.
This means that, as far as my personal experience is concerned--not counting family and friends, where the news is more mixed--this has felt not much worse than a typical downturn. I've been around long enough to remember past recessions, which affected book publishing much like the current one. There was a lot of talk about publishers reducing their seasonal lists, being more disciplined about author advances, and trimming needless expenses like lavish sales conferences and pricey lunches. After a year or two, the storm clouds parted and the old profligate ways gradually re-emerged.
This year has felt pretty much like those past recessions. None of the book projects in my pipeline have gotten cancelled or delayed. I even heard from one past client who reported that his editor had phoned him out of the blue to say, "Do you have a new book idea by any chance? There's an open spot in my list for Fall/Winter '09 and I'd love to see a proposal from you." I took it as a good sign--that at least one publisher sees the current slump as an opportunity to get aggressive and snatch business from its rivals rather than assuming a defensive crouch.
So although I know in my head that this recession is shaping up as The Big One of my lifetime, I didn't really feel it in my gut until I read these paragraphs from Michael Hirschorn's article in the new Atlantic:
Virtually all the predictions about the death of old media have assumed a comfortingly long time frame for the end of print—the moment when, amid a panoply of flashing lights, press conferences, and elegiac reminiscences, the newspaper presses stop rolling and news goes entirely digital. Most of these scenarios assume a gradual crossing-over, almost like the migration of dunes, as behaviors change, paradigms shift, and the digital future heaves fully into view. The thinking goes that the existing brands—The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal—will be the ones making that transition, challenged but still dominant as sources of original reporting.
But what if the old media dies much more quickly? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business—like, this May?
It’s certainly plausible. Earnings reports released by the New York Times Company in October indicate that drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default on some $400 million in debt. With more than $1 billion in debt already on the books, only $46 million in cash reserves as of October, and no clear way to tap into the capital markets (the company’s debt was recently reduced to junk status), the paper’s future doesn’t look good.
For someone in the writing business, the idea that the New York Times--the behemoth that has loomed over my consciousness as the American newspaper since I first learned to read; the paper that, with all its flaws and shortcomings, still rises head and shoulders above any other news source I know--the idea that this Times could collapse in the next six months, or get swallowed up by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, is about as close to apocalypse as I can imagine.
And I certainly am not crazy about the possibility of hundreds of first-rate writers and editors being out on the street looking for work and competing with people like me for the comfortable little freelance niches we've painstakingly carved out over the years.
I understand--again, intellectually--that the collapse of the Big Three Detroit automakers would have a much bigger impact on the American economy and millions of workers than that of the Times. But as a white-collar New Yorker who hasn't owned an American car in decades, I honestly don't find it that hard to imagine a world where GM, Ford, and Chrysler have become mere subsidiaries of Toyota, Honda, and Mitsubishi, and their brand names have vanished forever.
But a world where the Times won't show up on my doorstep every morning? Or where, if it does, it's yet another right-wing mouthpiece for Murdoch?
Now that's scary.
Update
Over at Columbia Journalism Review, Megan Garber faults Hirschorn for exaggerating the imminence of the threat to the Times's survival. In literal terms she is probably right--even Hirschorn acknowledges that it's unlikely that the newspaper will actually disappear in May. But the financial data Garber cites in pooh-poohing Hirschorn's glum prognostication isn't actually very reassuring. I'm sure it's true, as she says, that the Times can put its hand on another $400 million or so in credit and so keep paying its bills. But with ad revenues tumbling because of the Great Recession and no sign that either the Times or any other newspaper has actually come up with a business model that will work in the Internet age, that looks like a stopgap measure at best. Mortgaging your future is bad enough--it's even worse when there's no clear evidence you actually have a future.
