Outhier: Tribune demise a big deal

It speaks volumes - sad, sobering, irony-laced volumes - that the story of the imminent demise of my former newspaper, the East Valley Tribune, was broken not by a rival newspaper, or even by the Tribune itself, but by a local blogger.

A blogger who, until last January, worked for the Tribune. Ouch, right? Sort of like Brett Favre returning to Lambeau Field to beat the Packers. Just as allegorical. Only not as fun.

Indeed, the faster, nimbler, more responsive Internet played no small role in killing the 118-year-old newspaper. But that's not the whole story. After all, the Tribune was a web-first news entity, at least at the end. So what other factors led to Monday's announcement that the Tribune's parent company, Freedom Communications, would cease publishing the newspaper at year's end?

Here's the preliminary autopsy: Even after amputating roughly 40 percent of its workforce last January (including Heat City's Nick Martin, the blogger in question) and undergoing a bold editorial transfusion that turned the paper into a free, 3-days-a-week tabloid, the Tribune was overcome by an industry-wide sepsis of diminished ad revenue, static readership and, yes, Internet shock.

Even a Pulitzer Prize last spring failed to give the newspaper the boost it needed to escape the recession; according to the Tribune's own report, Freedom tried hanging a For Sale sign on the newspaper, with no takers.

Within the Valley's ever-expanding community of ex-Tribune employees, opinions vary as to why exactly the Tribune didn't make it. One former features writer theorized that the newspaper's ambitious, four-zone coverage scheme (i.e. separate editions for Mesa, Chandler, Queen Creek and Gilbert) and the expensive new print press Freedom purchased last year to make it all possible, simply rendered the paper unviable.

"They should have circled the wagons and just covered Mesa," the former reporter lamented. "I mean, Mesa is the country's 38th biggest city. That's your core."

The closing of the Tribune will leave metropolitan Phoenix with just one daily general interest newspaper, the Arizona Republic. One-paper cities are hardly unique in the United States. Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, has enjoyed the services of only one daily paper, the Houston Chronicle, since 1995. San Diego, San Antonio and Seattle, to name a few, are all one-paper towns.

But the Tribune's demise does saddle Mesa with a truly dubious distinction: Come January 1, 2010, it will be the largest American city (2000 pop.: 463,552) without its own dedicated daily newspaper.

This is a big deal. Traditionally, newspapers play a unique and empowering role in civic identity. Several years ago, as a Tribune staff writer, I referred to Scottsdale as a "suburb" in a story. The managing editor at the time quickly set me straight: Mesa and Scottsdale were in no way "suburbs." They were not "commuter" communities. He even showed me the jobs data to back it up.

At the time, the urban independence of Scottsdale and Mesa was a key rationale for the Tribune. These were full-fledged urban centers. They needed their own, specifically-zoned newspaper editions. That was the thinking, anyway. Evidently, it was a misjudgment. (The Tribune folded its Scottsdale edition last year.)

What a change from the boom years of the late 90s, when the Tribune hired me as the paper's first, full-time movie critic. It was an editorial luxury item, the movie critic position - a push-present for the successful and lucrative birth of the paper's weekly entertainment tabloid, Get Out Magazine.

At its staffing peak, the Tribune had full-time reporters to cover niche items such as science and fine arts, and a robust staff of newspersons who could dedicate themselves to special regional beats, such as homebuilding. Gradually, by attrition or layoffs, the newsroom was pared down. We stopped covering most out-of-town pro sporting events. Soon, we were all generalists, covering what needed to be covered, culminating in last January's mass layoffs (which swallowed my job) and Monday's final announcement.

The long-term ramifications of the Tribune's collapse are hard to predict. I have a hard time believing that the Republic will suffer the same fate: It has a massive, unchallenged readership and was quicker to embrace the Internet than the Trib. I also believe that something - perhaps, a web-only news publication - will fill the competitive void in Mesa.

In the short-term, the quality of newsgathering in the Valley stands to suffer a bit. The Tribune broke some big stories over the years - stories that the new, emerging class of quasi-volunteer newspersons and tastemakers (like Martin, who finances his Heat City site partly on donations) cannot be expected to consistently cultivate without proper remuneration.

Oh, and you folks in Scottsdale and Mesa? You're suburbanites now. Deal with it.

Craig Outhier is an award-winning journalist and former film critic for the East Valley Tribune. He is currently the film critic for 3TV's "Good Morning Arizona."