However, "the paper had improved steadily, and that's something the team I have assembled can take credit for." Once more money was in the pipeline, "to walk away from that was something I couldn't do." Rivard's initial urge to leave was based on his feeling that the Express-News had "plateaued" with the budget that it had. Rivard wouldn't disclose the exact amount, other than to say it is in the "seven figures." "Miami just cooks news," he said.īut the investment promise from Hearst provided the nudge he needed to stay.
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It's a great city and a great job, and I have a family here, and my wife is a successful professional here," said Rivard, who added that he had come to "really like" Miami after spending several years covering Central America. "I was not looking for any reason to leave San Antonio or the Express-News. More pay, more reporters, more news hole. What was the offer? Something unheard-of in today's media world: more money for staff. So rather than doing the obvious thing and moving to a paper with bigger circulation and a more cosmopolitan locale (sorry, San Antonio), he stayed put. But at the 11th hour, the Hearst Corporation, the Express-News' parent company, made Rivard an offer he couldn't refuse. Last September, Robert Rivard was all set to move from the editorship of San Antonio's only daily paper, circulation 237,000, to the seemingly more prestigious Miami Herald, daily circulation 341,000. That's why the story of the San Antonio Express-News is so surprising. And, in such situations, the ad revenue comes in regardless, so why bother with quality? The lack of competition within the industry has led to such things as uniformly bad television news, nonexistent radio news, and monopoly newspapers. Given that the choice of companies to work for has shrunk dramatically over the past two decades, many journalists will inevitably choose the latter. Any company not willing to accept lower profits to pay that overhead - and, as a study in the Columbia Journalism Review documented in 1998, those companies are many - will see the effects in its newsroom, as talented staffers either jump ship to other organizations or leave the business altogether. Not that profit is a bad thing, but good journalism is a high-overhead business. The corporate conglomeration of America has sent journalism into a state of decline.
Bob Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News
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