The Tribune Company, which filed for bankruptcy protection last week, recently merged the once-formidable bureaus of The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and other papers. The combined bureau has about 32 people, compared with the more than 70 the papers had there a year ago.

“I think the cop is leaving the beat here, and I think it’s a terrible loss for citizens,” said Andy Alexander, the Cox bureau chief, who is retiring. “But I can’t argue with the business decision that Cox has made, at a time when papers can’t even find the resources to cover the local zoning board.”

Cox’s decision was tied to its plan to sell most of its papers, but even without that impetus, the bureau would have become much smaller, said Sandy Schwartz, president of Cox Newspapers. “There are tremendous economic pressures,” he said. “We are in a crisis situation. All newspapers are.”

As large chains leave, some of their papers  including two of Cox’s  dip into their own budgets to keep a few reporters in Washington, but they are the exceptions.

“From an informed public standpoint, it’s alarming,” said Representative Kevin Brady, a Republican from the Houston area, who has seen The Houston Chronicle’s team in Washington drop to three people, from nine, in two years. “They’re letting go those with the most institutional knowledge, which helps reporters hold elected officials accountable.”

A few organizations have bucked the trend, including The Wall Street Journal, which has put more reporters in Washington in the last year, and The New York Times, whose bureau has not changed much in size for years. Each paper has almost 50 people in Washington.

Image "They're letting go those with the most institutional knowledge, which helps reporters hold elected officials accountable," said Kevin Brady, a Republican Congressman from Texas who said The Houston Chronicle's team in Washington shrank by two-thirds. Credit... Joe Marquette/Bloomberg News

To compensate somewhat for the retreat by its clients, The Associated Press bureau recently shuffled reporters to provide state-specific reports from Washington on all 50 states. The Bloomberg News bureau has expanded in recent years, and a few Internet sources, like Politico, are still expanding, but the number of journalists added is a fraction of the number lost.