(UPDATED AND EXTENDED VERSION OF AN EARLIER POST)

 The Long Beach City Council used harsh words and a unanimous vote against its erstwhile hometown newspaper Tuesday night, resolving to “reevaluate” the hundreds of thousands of dollars it spends with the Press-Telegram every year, now that the paper will be operated by the publisher of the Daily Breeze in Torrance.

The move is intended to pressure Dean Singleton — the corporate raider CEO of the Press-Telegram’s parent company, MediaNews Group, Inc. — to reverse his Feb. 29 purge of P-T publisher Dave Kuta and managing editor John Futch and his transfer of Long Beach’s century-old daily to executives of its sister paper in Torrance. The City of Long Beach is one of the P-T’s most-lucrative clients, spending over a quarter-million dollars on legal notices, public relations, announcements and other communications.

But the discussion in a council chamber crowded with sign-carrying P-T staffers, alumni, civic activists, members of various union across town and just plain readers quickly morphed into a brutal critique of the Press-Telegram’s steadily declining quality — which everybody seemed to attribute to drastic cuts in staff and callous treatment of employees. Mayor Bob Foster called it “a death spiral.” The newsroom lost a dozen other staffers along with the publisher and managing editor, and today a dozen more will be informed whether they will be out of work or transferred to the Daily Breeze.

“We’ve prided ourselves for a very long time on having our very own paper here in Long Beach,” said Tonia Reyes Uranga, the Seventh District councilwoman who made the motion. “But as the Press-Telegram has diminished we’ve depended more and more on alternative news sources, like The District and LBReport.com.”

First District councilwoman Bonnie Lowenthal agreed with Reyes Uranga. You read that correctly. “I agree with my colleague, Councilwoman Reyes Uranga,” said Lowenthal — and perhaps nothing better exemplified the mood of unity on this issue than the sight of those particular councilwomen, who are waging a contentious battle for the 54th Assembly District seat, sharing smiles, echoing one another’s opinions and generally making nice. “And I am definitely going to support her motion,” Lowenthal added.

“We need a hometown newspaper, and these changes at the Press-Telegram are extremely disturbing,” Lowenthal continued. “Lately the paper is full of stories about Torrance and the San Fernando Valley that are completely irrelevant. Meanwhile, local stories are being missed because there are not enough reporters. And the cutbacks and the reduction in wages mean the loss of middle-class jobs.  P-T reporters have not gotten a contract in a year and they are earning less than they were 10 years ago, when Dean Singleton bought the paper.”

Press-Telegram executive editor Rich Archbold was the only person to speak in opposition to the motion. He denied that the Press-Telegram is no longer based in Long Beach, expressed admiration for Singleton’s style of journalism, attributed the firings and redeployments to tough times in the newspaper business and blamed the controversy around them on “misleading statements” and “misconceptions.”

 ”The Long Beach Press-Telegram is here to stay!” asserted Archbold, an executive — as managing editor, editor in chief and executive editor — for 30 years, who during that tenure has implemented most of the changes that have led to the paper’s decline.  ”We’ve been here 100 years! We’re not going anywhere.”

But Reyes Uranga took issue with Archbold’s pronouncements.

“You say you’re not going anywhere,” she chided him, referring to the once-ample staff that has shrunk to 10 reporters, “but some of you are already gone.”

 Taking note of the passionate protest around him — including incisive indictments of the P-T administration’s long, relentless assault on the paper’s newsgathering operation by veteran reporters like Joe Segura and Tracy Manzer – Archbold tried to approach the situation magnanimously.

“Let me just say this: I’m glad my staff is here and talking,” Archbold began. “They are concerned about the paper, and so am I. We have a tremendous staff of people. The changes [that have just occurred] are painful to me. But not one reporter has been cut.”

Archbold expressed personal regret about the loss of P-T publisher Dave Kuta and managing editor John Futch, but suggested that the actual impact of their departure would be minimal.

“Kuta is being replaced,” Archbold said. “Its just that instead of two publishers, we’ll have one.”

Archbold didn’t come right out and say that the one will be Mark Ficarra, publisher of the Daily Breeze – and whose familiarity with the local scene is even more scant than his title insinuates. Ficarra has only been on the job in Torrance since January, and most of his resume was built in Arizona; he’s the former general manager of a Pennysaver in Phoenix. 

Instead, Archbold summarized the impact of moving the guts of the Press-Telegram’s production — publishing, copy editing and page design responsibilities – out of town with this sentence: “That simply means I’m going to be on the phone more often than I would normally be.”

As for Singleton, who has built a heavily leveraged national newspaper empire — and a reputation for ruthlessness — by buying community newspapers and bleeding their profits to buy more? Archbold painted him as a saint.

 ”Dean Singleton loves this business,” Archbold raved.  ”Dean Singleton is not doing this because he wants to buy another ranch or a private jet. He loves newspapers.”

Finally, however, Archbold got to the point of his appearance before the council — the taxpayer money it is threatening to take away from Singleton’s income stream. He claimed the recent purges at the Press-Telegram were the difficult but necessary actions of an industry in trouble. “Our business is suffering,” he said, as he presented his opposition to Reyes Uranga’s motion

“I can’t think of a worse idea,” said Archbold. ”We live by our ad revenue and circulation revenue. Do that and all you do is further cut into our budget.”

Archbold then proceeded to make what he acknowledged was something of an unseemly plea for an editor-in-chief, who is charged with overseeing journalistic independence from the newspaper’s financial side.

“I would hope you would increase spending [with the Press-Telegram],” he said, ”and allow me to hire more reporters and photographers.”

But Archbold didn’t hire any more reporters or photographers when the Press-Telegram made $16.7 million dollars with the recent sale of its historic office building at Sixth and Pine. That money went to Denver, where Singleton operates MediaNews Group headquarters.

Lowenthal pointed that out Tuesday night, and the rest of the council wasn’t swayed by Archbold’s reassurances, either. Rae Gabelich, Dee Andrews, Gerrie Schipske and Patrick O’Donnell each spoke forcefully and critically about the corporate export of the Press-Telegram and the drastic decline in the paper’s comprehensiveness during the past decade under Singleton.

“Even though Mr. Singleton has been given major accolades across the nation, he has also torn apart the opportunities for local news,” said Gabelich, who represents the Bixby Knolls-based eighth district. “I don’t think he cares. If we pull our ads, he could walk away and not give a … a … darn.

“I’ve watched the demise of the Press-Telegram. I wish it were the same paper it was even five years ago. It’s gotten physically smaller … It is more ads than news and it is full of stories from the Associated Press and other wire services. We are a large city. How is one end supposed to communicate with the other if we don’t have someone in Long Beach running the local paper?”

Mayor Bob Foster does not have a council vote, but he did have a strong opinion, and he presented it in direct response to Archbold’s endorsement of Singleton’s business strategy for the Press-Telegram. Foster called it “a death spiral.”

“I understand you have to do things for business, because it comes down to whether you can be profitable or not,” said the mayor. “But I think you see the passion here tonight. And I will tell you that we have heard the same kind of comment [as Archbold's] in other industries — like the United States steel industry in the 50s and 60s, when it actually chose not to modernize while other parts of the world did. And now there is no United States steel industry.

“We understand that journalism is changing, that readers want something else, but I don’t know that what they want is less. They want something else, and I urge you to reinvest in whatever that is. You have to do what you have to do, but I would urge you to think about that perspective — maybe that more investment, and not less, is what is necessary. Otherwise, it’s a death spiral, is what it is.”

Tags: 54th Assembly District, bonnie lowenthal, dean singleton, lbreport.com, Long Beach City Council, medianews group, press telegram, Rich Archbold, The District, Tonia Reyes Uranga