Earlier this week The McClatchy Company, owner of The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer announced a restructuring plan at both papers. Along with sweeping job cuts at both papers, many redundant efforts will be merged. For instance, the Sports department will be run out of Charlotte. It is clearly a cost-cutting measure that will vastly improve one side of the balance sheet.

One the other hand McClatchy is forgetting the key purpose of a newspaper, the glue that ties a community. Like them or not, the News and Observer is the meeting place through which an enormous portion of citizens get their information. As evidenced by the Plensa Plaza reaction, it is a place where politicians get the area’s pulse. It’s a two-way interaction that is immeasurable by bean counters, but it doubtlessly is there.

The local flavor of a paper helps define a region. While the Charlotte Observer and the News and Observer both cover UNC basketball games, for example, the interpretation of the game and its effects on fans is different in one city than it is in another. The real estate dedicated to stories shows the area’s interests as well. As mentioned, the Sports page will be run from Charlotte. While the sports pages will not be identical, are we going to get unwanted increases in Panthers, Bobcats, and Nascar coverage? Is it possible for anyone in Charlotte to comprehend the importance of the Carolina Hurricanes?

While the two papers will remain as two separate editions, there will be many more common stories. Stories about state politics, food, and lifestyle issues, for instance, will be carbon copies in both papers. Don’t be surprised if the next stage in this evolution is to merge the two papers as the “Carolina Observer”. Using McClatchy’s logic, there is no reason that 90% of the newspaper can’t be a canned carbon copy in both cities. Each city’s Local section is where local news, local sports, and local business/real estate could be housed. By centralizing content, layout, and production of 90% of the newspaper, McClatchy could save an additional fortune in costs.

While McClatchy is taking care of business on one side of the P&L, are they ignoring the other? Time Warner’s News14 Carolina has already shown us how catatonic and watered down homogenized regional TV news can be. As the paper moves in this direction (the Sunday paper’s content is totally useless to me these days), special interest web sites like this one keep popping up. With more outlets for news, will people feel the urge to pay attention to the ever-homogenizing “local” paper? I, for one, am seriously considering canceling my subscription. While I still need something with which to line the cat box, there is just too much free information and idea exchange out here to keep paying attention to other cities’ interpretation of yesterday’s news. I think I’ll go stew over this at the Raleigh Times Bar.