ABC NEWS TO DOWNSIZE DRASTICALLY – AT 6:58 P.M. ET:  At one time ABC News was the weak sister of the Big Three television news operations, well behind CBS and NBC. 

In recent decades the news division, thanks in large measure to the late Roone Arledge, grew substantially, although, in my view, it hitched its wagon to the wrong star – the equally late Peter Jennings, whose left-wing bias repelled many viewers. 

Now ABC is cutting way back again, and another voice, whether we like that voice or not, will be diminished.  From The Los Angeles Times:

As part of the deep cuts announced this week at ABC News, the network plans to close all of its physical bureaus around the country except Washington and halve the number of its domestic correspondents.

ABC News President David Westin confirmed in an interview Friday that the network's ranks of bureau correspondents, which currently number several dozen, would be cut in half and be replaced with "digital" journalists who would be expected to shoot and edit their own stories.

“We will have as many total journalists as we do now,” he said.

Although the network will keep a minimal staff presence in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami and Boston, it will shut down its bricks-and-mortar bureaus there and ask its remaining employees to work from the local affiliates. The Washington bureau will remain open, but its size will be substantially reduced.

COMMENT:  A lot of people will be thrown out of work.  Can this new model, using "digital" journalists, work?  No one really knows.  We do know that the "standards" that news operations brag about have become rather flabby in recent years, so maybe the digital reporters will add a breath of fresh air.  At the same time, covering major stories, which often requires large numbers of troops, will certainly suffer.

The network news operations are giving way to the cable systems, which serve viewers 24 hours a day.  I don't think the journalism has improved, but the speed certainly has.  We are a long way from the early days of television, when black-and-white film had to be flown in from overseas hot spots to be shown on nightly 15-minute news shows. 

March 1, 2010