"The Last Reporter"

[TTL News 308]

Quote

 

After he makes the coffee and feeds his hunting dogs Malibu, R.J., and Ivy, newspaper reporter Jeff Murray starts his workday around 7 a.m. Pen in hand, he flips on the TV, toggling between Elmira’s two local stations for word of overnight fires, crimes, or car crashes. Then he pops open his laptop and skims through his emails for anything he might need to “jump on” straight from home.

If nothing’s going on, he kisses his wife, Carol, goodbye and drives ten minutes to his newsroom, housed since 2015 in a one-story building on E. Church Street across from Elmira City Hall. Emblazoned across the office’s plate glass windows are the words STAR-GAZETTE. Since 1907, that’s been the name for news in this historic city.

n bygone days its sprawling newsroom in the old Baldwin Street headquarters never slept. But when Jeff, sixty-one, unlocks the rear door and steps inside around 8:15, it is he who flips the lights on each day to bring the paper to life.

He’s the only news reporter left at Elmira’s only daily newspaper.

“I’m the everything guy,” he says with a rueful smile as he sweeps a hand around the modern blue-and-gray newsroom. Twenty-eight empty desks gaze back. Once humming with reporters, editors, photographers, and advertising salespeople, the room is empty—save for the short, gray-haired “everything guy” in the rumpled red sweater.

This month marks Jeff’s twenty-fifth anniversary with the Star-Gazette, the very first newspaper in the giant Gannett chain. And nowadays it’s up to him to cover this city of 30,000 people while keeping an eye on the rest of Chemung County—and pleasing bosses he rarely sees.

“Yeah,” he admits. “It’s kinda lonely.”

His editors are in Binghamton and communicate with him via interoffice texts. The pages are laid out at Gannett facilities in New Jersey or Arizona, and the paper is printed in Rochester. “But I’m a gregarious, friendly guy,” he says. “I’m used to working in a newsroom with a couple of dozen people, with lots of noise and activity going on.” Gone are the pizzas on election nights, the holiday parties, the friendships. “I do miss that,” he admits.

Today the Star-Gazette has a daily print circulation of little more than 6,000, down from 17,000 a decade ago and 32,000 in 1997. Sunday circulation has tumbled, meanwhile, from 45,000 to 9,500. With so many people getting news, opinion, and entertainment for free online, plummeting readership has squeezed nearly every daily and weekly newspaper in the nation—sometimes fatally.

 

This is an excellent article well worth your time. Click here to read the rest.

[Chris 2,161]

I know my gratitude doesn't pay the bills, but if Jeff ever feels like doing some post retirement writing pro bono, he is more than welcome here and can write about any damn thing he wants. 

It's so sad what's become of the Star Gazette.