I think this is the next question the management of the Democrat and Chronicle need to ask themselves.  Any organization facing challenges, and not too many are looking at challenges like the D&C, needs to ask themselves tough questions.

In Monday’s edition, Jim Lawrence announced that the D&C is combining the speaking out and the editorial page. In his essay, Lawrence says:

Frankly, we’d rather keep the pages separate as we had for decades until we went to a merged page on Mondays earlier this year.

But, unfortunately, economic conditions have worsened in recent months, forcing the newspaper, in general, to undergo cutbacks as our publisher, Ali Zoibi, explained in a column on Sunday. (See the column at DemocratandChronicle.com/opinion).

“Economic conditions have worsened in recent months”? Sorry Jim, but you guys have been in the death spiral for at least 15 years.

This cut effects two areas that would have been described as mission critical a few years ago. But now I’m not so sure the editorial board is mission critical. 

Given the number of blogs dedicated to local issues, people looking for local opinion can do so on the internet.  The certainly can get plenty of liberal opinion without having to turn to the D&C.  We, along with our friends over at mustardstreet, are trying to fill the void of conservative opinion on the internet.

This also leaves the D&C with the chicken and egg scenario.  Did people stop reading the paper because there is less in it, or is there less in the paper because fewer people are buying it?

One has to wonder how much the editorial policies of the paper have effected readership.  Are there people like myself who read their hero worship of people like David Gantt and get disgusted and stop buying the paper? When organizations like the New York Times call for his removal as Chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee and then his hometown newspaper is silent on the issue, and celebrates his disruption of public meetings, it hurts their credibility.

Are people fed up with their endless stories on the virture of city living and how wonderful everything there is?  It’s easy to question their objectivity when you see tv news stories of mayhem in city neighborhoods and schools and see small briefs in the paper.

The step in combing these two pages is just a stop gap measure.  In a few years there will be a drastically different D&C.  Is there really a need for their A section?  If you are interested in national news, there a plently of other places to get the information they provide for free.

I seriously doubt that their social networking efforts are going to save their business.  Younger people, the ones primarily interested in this stuff, have many other places to do this.  How can the D&C expect to compete with Facebook, My Space, etc?

The future for the D&C is really bleak.  Let’s hope that as the cost cutting continues, guys like Jim Lawrence and Tom Tobin are put on the chopping block before people who add value, reporters like Gary Craig, Steve Orr, are.