Stepping down

When David Little took the helm at the Chico Enterprise-Record in 1999, he was surrounded by 45 news professionals, including 15 full-time reporters, who bustled about the newsroom.

Nearly 20 years later, the E-R has changed dramatically. These days, a staff of four full-time reporters, along with a few editors and part-timers, fill its pages. From there, an in-house regional design hub, the NorCal Design Center, lays out each edition, along with more than a dozen other community newspapers, from its office building at 400 E. Park Ave. Little’s duties have changed as well: In addition to serving as editor of the E-R, he oversees the Oroville Mercury-Register and manages the editors of 17 Northern California papers.

In an ever-changing industry, Little is making headlines. The E-R announced last week that he’d turned in his resignation in June and is leaving Jan. 1. Mike Wolcott, who has led the design center the past four years, will take his place.

During a recent sit-down interview with the CN&R, Little was quick to point out that the Chico E-R’s story isn’t unique. Newspapers across the country, many corporate-owned, have been put through the ringer. Due to plummeting circulation and declining advertising revenue, contracted newsrooms have been asked to do more amid stagnating wages.

“Every editor in the country can tell this story of how big they once were,” he said.

However, there is a significant part of the industry that hasn’t changed after all these years, Little said, and it is the same thing that has continued to give him hope for its future: the tenacity and hunger of the folks behind the ink. That’s what he’ll miss the most.

Little got his start in journalism in 1978 in the newsroom of his local daily: the Oceanside Blade-Tribune. Then 16, without a lick of newspaper experience but a knack for the written word, he offered to work as a sports stringer—for free. Within a few years, he was covering professional sports, including the then-San Diego Chargers.

Little was born in Chico, where three generations of his family worked at daily newspapers on the business and production side of things. After his family moved to Southern California, he spent every vacation visiting his grandparents here, intending to settle down in the region some day.

He worked as a part-timer for the E-R during his college days at Chico State, where he earned a degree in English. After graduation, he spent a couple of years at newspapers in Oceanside and San Clemente and then eight years at the Redding Record-Searchlight, where he eventually became city editor. While there, he met his wife, Angie. They have three adult children, a daughter and two sons.

Little ran the Eureka Times-Standard for 16 months before securing the editor post at the Chico E-R, succeeding Jack Winning, and that’s where he has been ever since.

He’s had little time to reflect on his career, but noted how proud he is of his staff. Highlights include the E-R’s coverage of the Oroville Dam spillway crisis last year, and now, the Camp Fire. The team had its second-best showing in the statewide competition held by the California News Publishers Association earlier this year, taking home eight awards, many for the spillway coverage.

“It’s just so personally rewarding to watch a team come together and cover something so important so well,” he said. “I think that’s probably what I’ll remember most about working here, is just seeing this team perform at an elite level.”

The Chico E-R is under the umbrella of Digital First Media, which is owned by Alden Global Capital, a New York-based hedge fund. DFM owns 97 newspapers, including the Chico E-R, Oroville M-R and Paradise Post.

Earlier this year, Alden Global came under fire by its Denver Post employees, who took to its corporate offices to protest. Garnering national attention, their battle was featured in The New York Times and The Washington Post.

In an April column, Little wrote that the E-R shared the Denver Post’s pain: “When we think we can’t get any smaller, we’re told to get smaller. … But we plow ahead. We know what we do is important. We know democracy would be in shambles without informed citizens. We value what we do even when it feels our owners don’t.”

Little remained diplomatic about whether that factored into his exit, telling this newspaper that it was part of his consideration but not the determining factor.

Longtime employee Steve Schoonover, who was city editor at the Chico E-R for about 18 years, was more blunt about the corporate ownership.

“My biggest hope for the E-R is that someone buys it and gets it away from the hedge fund vultures,” he said. “We do such incredible work here. It gets harder and harder and harder with fewer people. … It’d be one thing if we were losing money, but we’re making them a million bucks a year and they keep cutting.”

Schoonover, 66, whose last day was Dec. 18, delayed his retirement several months, first to help with election coverage, then the Camp Fire. Schoonover is known for being a jack of all trades, taking on a variety of roles at the paper—including garden editor and copy desk chief—since he started there in 1980.

He hopes to continue contributing to the E-R in retirement, as well as finishing a novel on the history of the Yahi tribe. Little hasn’t lined anything up yet, but said he will enjoy watching young professionals spread their wings and one day may end up in a classroom coaching some of them.

“The folks that are left in the business are the same sort of confident, passionate, talented people that I was when I was 22 years old,” Little said. “And I feel like the people who work in newsrooms make me confident that journalism is in good hands. … The people that are left are fighters, and I really value each and every one of them at every newspaper in every city—dailies, weeklies, big metros and small local newspapers, like ours. They’re just full of really good people that I’m going to miss.”