The state’s biggest newspaper was making news that it did not report in its pages or website.
In 2014, News Journal owner Gannett ordered all employees to apply for their jobs. That resulted in a large number of departures as employees who were not offered new positions departed.
Others refused to reapply and went elsewhere. Others who reapplied and were given positions took other job offers that had popped up during that period of uncertainty.
By 2015, staff positions were filled with you newer reporters, but it was clear that much institutional knowledge had been lost.
The effects of the consolidation of copy desk operations could be seen in the quality of the copy. More than once, the same stories appear in a different place in the paper, accompanied by more frequent typographical errors.
Stories also tended to ramble on as editing remains light.
Gannett had in the meantime been separated into newspaper and broadcast companies, with the newspaper side acquiring the Scripps and Milwaukee Journal newspapers. Cuts were expected in those locations.
The News Journal was not alone in its travails. The industry continued to see single-digit declines in advertising revenues, with digital ads not filling the gap. Circulation over the years had plummeted from 120,000 to 75,000. Paywalls, a limit on the number of stories that could be read without being charged, brought in limited revenues.
Later in 2015, Gannett offered buyout offers to older staffs, many of whom took the offer. Reporters with familiar bylines disappeared with no official tributes or thank yous.
Among those retiring was opinion page editor John Sweeney, with his work split among two staffers, and fewer local editorials. Sweeney did get a chance to run a graceful farewell column.
Under new leadership, the News Journal produced one of the few front page editorials in recent memory, with the dramatic headline Fix Our Broken City.
The editorial came after word that ABC-TV had green-lighted a pilot TV show carrying the name Murdertown, a clear reference to the high homicide rate in the city.
The word “Our” struck many long-time observers of the newspaper as odd since the News Journal had decades ago moved its operations outside the city to a site in the New Castle area and had never gone to the trouble to set up a bureau.
Investigative reporting continued, but a lack of resources were clearly hampering those efforts.
Without the obituaries the News Journal would fall even further.