The Sacramento Bee’s steady decline over the past four decades stands as a cautionary tale for California journalism, and last week’s announcement of deep staff cuts at the newspaper only underscores how far the once-dominant Capitol news outlet has fallen.
News broke recently that Chatham Asset Management, the company that took control of the McClatchy newspaper chain after its 2020 bankruptcy, is slashing jobs at the Bee and its sister papers. The cuts mark another grim chapter for a publication that traces its roots back to California’s Gold Rush era and once stood as one of the most influential news organizations in the state.
For decades, the Bee waged an old-fashioned newspaper war with its cross-town rival, the Sacramento Union. Both papers were founded in the years following the discovery of gold and California’s admission to statehood, and for more than a century they battled for readers and influence in the state capital.
The competition sharpened considerably in 1966, when San Diego-based Copley Newspapers purchased the Union and set out to challenge the Bee’s dominance. The rivalry carried political undertones as much as business ones. The Bee’s editorial page had long championed liberal causes, while Copley’s ownership pushed a conservative agenda. Publisher Jim Copley appeared eager to strengthen the standing of Republican leaders in Sacramento, particularly incoming Gov. Ronald Reagan, whose election coincided almost exactly with Copley’s acquisition of the paper.
The two newsrooms developed distinct personalities. The Bee tended toward a more traditional, buttoned-up approach to covering politics and local news, while the Union cultivated a scrappier reputation built on aggressive investigative reporting into the state’s political class.
The Bee sharpened its own competitive edge starting in 1984, when Gregory Favre took over as editor and expanded the newsroom, eventually earning the paper several Pulitzer Prizes. Around that time, the Bee and papers across the country were flush with advertising revenue from dominant local retail and classified sections — a business model that would soon be upended by the rise of the internet in the 1990s. Online competition gutted classified advertising and reshaped retail marketing, setting off a long decline for newspapers nationwide.
The Union didn’t survive the shift. Weakened by falling ad revenue, a circulation-reporting scandal, and years of ownership turmoil, the paper shut down in 1994. The Bee outlasted its rival, but it could not escape the broader collapse of the industry, and McClatchy ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 2020.
The consequences for statehouse journalism have been significant. There was a time when nearly every daily newspaper in California kept at least one reporter stationed at the Capitol, tracking legislation and lawmakers with direct ties to their communities. As newsrooms shrank or disappeared altogether, those Capitol bureaus vanished one after another, leaving only a small number of traditional newspaper reporters still covering state government full time.
Nonprofit newsrooms have stepped in to help fill that gap, with CalMatters emerging as one of the most prominent examples. Its founders recognized the erosion of political coverage as a serious problem for the state’s civic health.
I left the Bee for CalMatters in 2017, after 33 years writing this column, having watched firsthand as the paper and others like it cut staff in a struggle to stay afloat, with political coverage among the casualties. I believed then, as I do now, that Californians still want to understand what’s happening inside the Capitol — and that outlets like CalMatters could help ensure that need continues to be met. That bet has largely paid off, with nonprofit newsrooms growing even as traditional papers have continued to contract.
The timing of the Bee’s latest round of layoffs is notable. It comes just as Gov. Gavin Newsom weighs whether to sign legislation that would offer California news organizations refundable tax credits to help them retain reporting staff — a potential lifeline for an industry still searching for a way to endure.
Original source: CalMatters
