That Was Then
Fourteen months ago, reporter Todd Smith was covering a city council meeting in [Kirkwood] Missouri when a gunman charged in and started firing, killing five people. Smith was shot in the right hand.
"I definitely felt my life was in danger. I called my boss and said I wouldn't be able to write about it because I've been shot in the hand," says Smith, who required two operations to repair the damage.
Last week the Suburban Journals, a unit of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, laid him off along with other staffers. "I was shocked," says Smith, 37. "It was a lot to take a bullet for a newspaper." The paper did not return calls.
By the way, the latest newspaper circulation figures -- showing rapid and accelerating decline -- suggest that the industry's strategy of giving people less in the paper and hoping they'll pay 75 cents for a daily précis of what's on the Web site is not paying off.
