Petition Drive Aimed at "Buffalo"

by Jerry Sullivan
Editorial Vice Chairperson

Little by little, The Buffalo News has been losing bits and pieces of its journalistic soul over the years.

In its desire for profit, the company appears to have made quality writing and editing a secondary concern at the newspaper. Reduced staff and limited resources have made it increasingly difficult to put out a paper we can all be proud of on a consistent basis.

We've taken a lot of hits. But none has stung more than the recent decision to cut our weekly magazine back to a monthly cycle. It was yet another blow to our collective pride as journalists.

The Guild has distributed a petition to all departments, expressing members' dismay at the decision and urging management to reconsider. If you haven't already signed the petition in your department, please do so.

Daily journalism is our bread and butter. But some of our best and most provocative stories have been done in the Buffalo magazine on Sundays. Many of our awards have been received for magazine pieces. For example, The News has won two first places and two seconds in statewide sports writing awards over the past four years - three for magazine pieces.

Those were all stories about local people. The essential charm of the magazine is that it gives our readers longer and more finely crafted stories about their community. In surveys, the readers consistently tell The News they want more news about their own communities. Yet the company brought in Parade - a national Sunday publication with no local content -and cut the heart out of their own magazine.

Why spend big money on surveys if you're going to disregard the results and do what's financially expedient anyway?

Charles Anzalone has won numerous writing awards in the magazine. Upon his appointment to magazine editor a year ago, he began working tirelessly to convince management that the weekly magazine was worth preserving.

"Hearing the decision to discontinue the weekly magazine after what we accomplished was the worst moment of my life at The Buffalo News," Anzalone said. "The magazine was a wonderful creative outlet for so many people. We wanted to remind people why they got into this business in the first place. And readers loved it."

Management says the decision was strictly a financial one, and that the magazine wasn't able to generate enough advertising revenue to justify its existence.

In a Dec. 20 column announcing the change, editor Murray B. Light said there are only "about 20" newspapers still publishing their own Sunday magazines.

However, the national trend seems to be reversing.

"There is a revival of Sunday magazines going on in other parts of the country," Anzalone said, "and we're going to channel all that passion and commitment we felt for the old one into making this new monthly magazine part of that revival. The new magazine has to be a success, both financially and journalistically.

"If we do that, we hope it will be bigger and more frequent than it is now."

 Return to The Buffalo Newspaper Guild Home Page