These Reporters Lost Their Jobs. Here Are the Stories They Couldn't Tell

Gary Warner, former state bureau chief for The Bulletin. Photo / Joe Kline, The New York Times

They were experts on New Orleans public schools and Oregon state politics. They shared the news when a popular high school basketball player in Colorado returned to the court after a knee injury, and they helped solve the mystery of a City Hall cake vandalism in Texas. At newspapers big and small — for moments grand and modest — these local newspaper journalists told the stories of their communities.

Until one day, when they were gone.

Across the country this year, more than 1,000 newspaper employees lost their jobs, highlighting a crisis in local journalism that has been intensifying for more than a decade. The shrinking of local news — driven by factors including a decline in print advertising and the mergers of newspaper companies — has serious consequences, from decreased voter turnout to increased polarization.

And then there are the lost stories.

In interviews, eight onetime local journalists told us about the stories they still had in their notebooks. To capture their images, we turned to photojournalists who used to work alongside them until they lost their jobs as well.

The Orange County Weekly (Anaheim, California): Gabriel San Román, 37

Gabriel San Román was raised in Anaheim, California, and covered the city. He lost his job in November when the newspaper folded and is looking for his next act.

The old press pass of Gabriel San Román, former reporter for The OC Weekly, is displayed for a photograph in a gift store at Disneyland, Photo / Frederico Medina, The New York Times

I was a Latino reporter in a Latino-majority city that was coming to terms with its demographic reality. I had a column called "alt-Disney," and I was also a labor reporter. Last year, there was heavy media attention on the living wage ballot measure that is supposed to apply to Anaheim Resort corporations that have subsidy agreements with the city. It establishes a wage scale up to $18 an hour by 2022. After it passed, a lot of that attention went away. But I was still asking how the city would implement it. The Disneyland Resort got itself exempted by asking the city to terminate two subsidies it was getting. And there was this big question of whether employees would file a lawsuit. I had done a story where the author of the measure essentially said it was intended to apply to Disneyland. The lawsuit against Disney got announced Dec. 9. I still went to the press conference. I hope to keep reporting on that story. — @gsanroman2

The Dallas Morning News (Dallas): Nanette Light, 32

Nanette Light covered Collin County, Texas, and lost her job in January. She now works in communications for a pediatric health care foundation in Dallas.

An old work identification card belonging to Nanette Light, former reporter for The Dallas Morning News. Photo / Nathan Hunsinger, The New York Times

One story I reported for a long time was about an elderly couple who lived by the McKinney airport. McKinney was named "Best Place to Live in America" by Money Magazine one year, and the city wanted to grow this airport. This couple wanted to move, but it was hard to sell because who would want to live right there? The city wanted to buy it for less than they thought it was worth. I was in the middle of the reporting, and every time I think about it, I feel guilty. To me, it was a growing pains story — the growing pains of a city as it evolves from a small community to a much larger suburb, and what are the costs of that? Collin County is one of the fastest-growing counties in the country. The population is a little over 1 million, and when I was on the beat, the projections were it was going to triple in size by 2050. Toyota relocated its headquarters there, it had a reputation for good schools. At one point, there was a whole bureau covering Collin County. By the time I got laid off, it was just me. And the thing is, people miss you when you're not there. I had written some stories about a school district that weren't super-flattering. But when I got laid off, the president of a school board said on Twitter that he had always appreciated my work. That meant a lot to me. — @NanetteLight

The New Orleans Times-Picayune (New Orleans): Wilborn Nobles, 27

Wilborn Nobles is a New Orleans native who worked as an education reporter at the Times-Picayune, which was purchased and absorbed by its competitor, The Advocate, earlier this year. He is now a reporter at The Baltimore Sun.

Wilborn Nobles III, former education reporter for The Times-Picayune. Photo / Michael DeMocker, The New York Times

I was covering the Orleans Parish School District. I was responsible for giving residents and the nation an idea about what it was like to participate in one of the largest contemporary school experimentations in the country, which was an all-charter school district. The charter school system in New Orleans wouldn't be what it is today had it not been for Hurricane Katrina and the levee failures. I was 13 when Katrina occurred. My mother stayed, and she drowned in her home. My mom was a substitute teacher. She taught English and language arts. My participation covering that system as an education reporter was informed at a basic level just by the fact that my first teacher was my mom. There's so much that I felt was left undone. I've heard a few things both before and after I was laid off about abuse in school — some involving a school bus driver allegedly harassing a student and that same bus driver being a registered sex offender. After I got laid off, I heard another allegation about a group of students being transferred because the football players had been sexually harassing those students. These are difficult things to prove and find people willing to talk about it, but if there are allegations out there, somebody needs to dig. Every now and then, I still kind of stress myself out thinking about it. — @WilNobles

The Vindicator (Youngstown, Ohio): Graig Graziosi, 33

Graig Graziosi grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, and attended Youngstown State University. He lost his job after the city's daily newspaper, The Vindicator, folded in August. He is now in the process of moving to Washington, D.C., where he hopes to find a job in journalism.

The old press pass of Graig Graziosi, former reporter for The Vindicator. Photo / William D Lewis, The New York Times

I had been working at The Vindicator for three years. I ended up taking a lead on reporting the Lordstown closure. I did a big story heading into the final days of the plant. The biggest story, if I were still working today, would be looking at the fallout from Lordstown one year out. For a long time after we lost the steel industry, the refrain around here was, "Well, at least there's still Lordstown. At least we have the car plant. At least we have General Motors." Overall, Lordstown had around 3,000 employees. From 2016 to 2019, that was 3,000 good-paying jobs that left our region. We were anticipating beginning to see the declines on our housing market. You're going to have decent-size family homes on the market that probably aren't going to sell. We were looking at declines in college enrollment. There were a lot of students that ended up leaving the Lordstown school district. Those are all people who could have gone to Youngstown State University. Growing up in this area, you get it. You understand the obvious parallels between what's happening with Lordstown and what happened with the steel mills. The steel industry and GM Lordstown were places you could go with minimal investment in an education. If you could get in there after high school, you could go in and start making a wage that could earn you a good middle-class life. You have an understanding of what a place like Lordstown means to people, an understanding of that identity. — @graiggraziosi

The Bend Bulletin (Bend, Oregon): Gary Warner, 61

Gary Warner covered the Oregon state Legislature and lost his job in August. After being briefly rehired to cover a different beat, he is now working as a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Transportation.

Gary Warner, former state bureau chief for The Bulletin. Photo / Joe Kline, The New York Times

I think the political transformation of central Oregon is the big story. It used to be that the Cascade Mountains, which separate two-thirds of the state from the third on the coast, was like a wall. Everything to the east of the Cascades, that was stronghold Republican country. What you were starting to see in Bend was, for lack of a better term, like a blue pimple that had popped through the Cascades and was expanding into this previously bedrock Republican area. That transition was fueled by the rapid growth of Bend. It has become quite the Aspen of Oregon, with a lot of wealth moving in there. The identity of a place like central Oregon, which went from timber to recreation, is really the story of what's going on throughout the West and whether it can make that transition successfully. Who is winning and who is losing? Newspapers are one of the last places where you can consistently hear voices from both sides on the same issue. There are political races that are actually close. I [covered] a Republican primary for one of the statehouse seats. It was the race for the 53rd District House seat in 2018. I did stories on both candidates and their positions. It was decided by two votes. Two votes. — @TheGaryWarner

The Corpus Christi Caller Times (Corpus Christi, Texas): Julie Garcia, 32

Julie Garcia covered City Hall in Corpus Christi, Texas, and was among a group of layoffs at Gannett newspapers nationwide. She is now a reporter at The Houston Chronicle.

I would do these long City Council day tweet threads. It would start at 10 a.m., and I'd get everybody hyped up, like, "It's City Council day!" People felt comfortable reaching out to me saying, "Hey, my playground is gone at my park. Can you figure out what's going on for me?" I'd text or call the parks director. It is being a messenger, getting a quick answer for a quick question and building rapport with your community. For two or three meetings after I was laid off, I still covered City Council. I would watch the meeting, and I would still live-tweet. There was one item I was really interested in. Corpus Christi had a lot of boil water incidents. There was one big one where we couldn't even touch the water. We couldn't take showers for four days. The city was considering doing business again with the company associated with this. I wanted to watch that meeting because I wanted to see what they were going to say. I still felt and continue to feel such a responsibility to that community. — @reporterjulie

The Ledger (Lakeland, Florida): Allison Guinn, 35

Allison Guinn was The Ledger's assistant managing editor and lost her job in May. She has been freelancing and looking for full-time work outside of journalism.

Allison Guinn, former assistant managing editor of The Ledger. Photo / Scott Wheeler, The New York Times

When I was a reporter, I covered Lakeland City Hall, the biggest city in our area, and when I became an editor, I kept up writing just because we needed to fill holes. We still managed to get some good stories out there. But follow-ups were killing us. For example, we had a reporter, Clifford Parody, who had gone after the backlog of rape kits in Florida, and the state said they would go through and test all the kits. The Winter Haven police had a couple of arrests as a result of the testing, which we wrote about. It was evidence that this really difficult story that this really talented reporter had done was making a difference. Not long after, Parody was laid off. And then we heard that the state wasn't doing what it had said it would and that even the Winter Haven Police Department wasn't testing all the kits. But the reporter's not there anymore, and it was like it all disappeared from institutional knowledge. If you're going to break a story, if you're going to push it, it's heartbreaking that you don't get to be there to follow through. As an editor, that's what kept me up at night. — @alliguinn

The Greeley Tribune (Greeley, Colorado): Anne Delaney, 51

Anne Delaney covered local sports in Greeley, Colorado, and the surrounding area. This month, she was told the newspaper was cutting her and another sports reporter's positions just a year after she had moved to Colorado for the job.

You talk to athletic directors, you talk to coaches, you go to games. You call people and hope you reach them somehow. And then you go from there. Last month, an athletic director called me to tell me a football coach was stepping down after the season, because he trusted me. When I got that information, I wrote a story on the coach: I talked to him, talked to a player, talked to a coach at an opposing high school, and boom — we're off to the races. That's how it works. If we're losing journalists, how does that all work? I don't know what's next. What happens if somebody steals from the booster club? I hope it doesn't happen, but if someone like me is here, people can feel free to call and say, "Hey, you ought to check this out." What happens when nobody is around? There's one story that's not going to happen but I really wanted to get to. Some schools in the area have really struggled with not having enough bus drivers. I was going to take a look at that problem from a sports perspective: How are teams getting to games? How are the schedules changing? Does that lead to longer days? I tried to put this in motion a few times in the fall, and somebody didn't get back to me or I got sidetracked by another assignment. I hate that. — @AnneGDelaney

Written by: Sarah Mervosh, Amy Harmon and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

Photographs by: Joe Kline, Micheal DeMocker, Nathan Hunsinger, Scott Wheeler, Frederico Medina, William D Lewis

© 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES