The newspaper industry has been undergoing dramatic change for years, and now this – Iowa City Press-Citizen veteran sportswriters no longer will be covering their hometown teams at the University of Iowa.

Word surfaced this week that beat writers at the Des Moines Register now will have the bylines in the P-C for Hawkeye coverage. Meanwhile, veteran P-C sportswriters Ryan Suchomel and Pat Harty are off the beat. Suchomel, the sports editor, has lost his job and Harty apparently has been told he will be covering high school events.

The Press-Citizen and The Register are owned by The Gannett Company, the largest U.S. newspaper publisher. It owns USA Today along with numerous other newspapers, and radio and television stations. Gannett’s net income was $588 million in 2010.

This was clearly a Gannett decision that was carried out by leaders of the two Iowa newspapers. The decision surely was purely financial, cost-saving so to speak.

Having worked in the newspaper industry for 25 years (1973-1998) in the sports department, I know a little bit about how the business operates. I interacted with management, built and trimmed many budgets, fired people in cost-cutting directives, and tried to implement new ideas as the industry evolved.

A newspaper owner, like one in any other business, is there to make money. Businesses that don’t show an acceptable margin to their board of directors end up making changes or, at worst, closing their doors. Publishers and managing editors are constantly involved in finding ways to make things as profitable as possible.

The Gannett Company, with two resources in the Press-Citizen and The Register, evidently felt there was somewhat of a duplication of services. Both staffs were covering the Hawkeyes. If the decision was made to have one team of beat writers do the work for both papers, well, the company would save some money.

Newspapers near and far have thought outside the box, so to speak, in their coverage of news and sports. Papers years ago competed heatedly against one another, but nowadays find themselves in bed with each other. Papers in Dubuque will provide news to the one in Cedar Rapids, and vice versa.

The Gazette Company, which owns the newspaper and KCRG-TV, have intertwined their talent. Sportswriters are on television. TV anchors and reporters are doing stories for the newspaper. Both are contributing to online endeavors such as podcasts. They’ve shared an owner for years but, for the longest time, never the news.

I saw this coming years ago. At one time, The Gazette developed something called CITYLINE, a source of news that could be accessed from your phone. It required a reporter to voice news to CITYLINE. So in addition to producing the print product, reporters also began working in another medium. It was one of the first attempts to deliver news immediately to customers.

Now we find ourselves in a 24-hour news cycle, and newspapers have had to adjust by developing online versions complete with stories, photographs, columns, blogs and podcasts. Much of what you read in the newspaper could have been viewed online hours before.

Writers who have not embraced online publication and social media have found themselves on the chopping block. It is the way of the world and the way of the newspaper business.

Suchomel and Harty didn’t get a chance to embrace anything except a change in what they’ve done for years. And they’ve done it very well.

The problem I have with this decision is that in reducing the manpower in covering the Hawkeyes, Gannett actually has put itself at a competitive disadvantage. That is no knock on The Register’s sports staff, which is and always has been solid.

Press-Citizen writers live in the town of the university they cover, and therefore are capable of tossing everything aside and covering breaking news (the Chris Street fatal crash comes to mind). Sure, other P-C writers can jump in, but Hawkeye beat writers now are more than two hours away.

Suchomel and Harty have developed sources and relationships over the years. They see and hear things on the streets of Iowa City and Coralville. Guys like Randy Peterson, Rick Brown and Andrew Logue at The Register have connections as well, but they are not in Johnson Country every day. It’s just not the same from a geographical standpoint.

Folks in Michigan might want to take notice. Gannett owns the Detroit Free Press and Lansing State Journal. Could the Free Press beat guys soon take over Michigan State Spartans coverage for the State Journal?

Unless something changes, Iowa will be the only Big Ten school going forward that won’t actually be covered by local sportswriters.

Whatever sum that will be saved, nothing has been gained.

(Mark Dukes is former sports editor of the Cedar Rapid Gazette. He is co-host of The Gym Class radio show weekdays from 3-4 p.m. on KGYM-AM 1600, FM-107.5, FM-106.3 and kgymradio.com)