Slim, Fast

An incident that took place several weeks ago epitomizes the regard with which Crecente is held in the video-game community. He learned of a new project in development at Sony, and when he contacted the company for a comment, he was told that if he divulged anything about it, the firm would essentially blackball him in the future. Instead of buckling, Crecente ran the story complete with Sony's promise of retribution, thereby unleashing a torrent of criticism at the firm for its heavy-handed tactics. Sony subsequently caved, retracting the threat and normalizing relations with Crecente.

Why send Crecente back to the news department when he has such cred in a subject area beloved by younger readers, whom newspapers are supposedly desperate to attract? For Temple, it's a matter of priorities. "As we saw people leaving metro and we were unable to replace them, I didn't feel the financial situation would support his beat any longer," he says. Besides, Crecente could go back to his old formula, writing about video games in between crime scenes.

Crecente didn't dismiss this transfer out of hand -- yet he resigned from the Rocky within a few days. "I came to the conclusion that part of my life is sort of gone," he says. "I wanted to focus on gaming coverage, which I think is an important, growing medium." Gawker Media, which owns Kotaku, made that possible with a generous contract. On top of reporting and blogging for Kotaku, Crecente is overseeing five writers scattered across the planet, and he expects to add two more to his roster soon. Furthermore, Gawker execs have been trying to talk him into writing a book for the past year (they already have an agent lined up), and he can finally take them up on the proposition. Oh, yeah: He'll probably freelance some video-game articles for the Rocky, too.

Even so, the Rocky's feature section will take a significant hit due to Crecente's exit and the changing status of Lehndorff, Ryckman and Gonzalez. Temple plans to fill the space by relying more heavily on what he calls "local experts" -- non-journalists who can be cajoled into becoming contributors. In this context, he mentions YourHub.com, an allusion capable of sending a shudder down many a reader's spine. Still, he's confident that such a tack won't harm the feature pages, just as he's sure the Rocky will remain an interesting and useful product even as the staff shrinks. In his words, "There's no biblical writ that says there must be two hundred and X number of people to produce a good, quality newspaper." He adds, "I think there are many positive developments in journalism and media today. And this doesn't change that."

Good thing, since Scripps spokesman Tim Stautberg confirms that "publishers in a majority of our newspapers are offering voluntary separation plans" -- most notably the Memphis Commercial Appeal and the Ventura County Star. An exception is the Daily Camera, the largest paper encompassed by Prairie Mountain Publishing, a management partnership evenly split between Scripps and MediaNews Group, the Post's corporate parent. But Camera publisher Al Manzi doesn't rule out job cuts in the future. "We're just like any other business," he says. "We're always evaluating our staffing levels based on our business environment. Nothing is set in stone."

Such talk makes reporter Gerhardt even happier he'll be paid handsomely to voluntarily separate from the Rocky. "I'm starting to worry about the future of the paper itself -- and I would certainly hate to advise a young person coming into the game today to stay in newspapers," he admits. "These are very spooky times. I'm glad I'm not going to be around, except to watch it from the outside."