Just came into work to find that the long-announced layoffs have commenced. A dear friend and colleague whose husband works here just learned moments ago that he got the axe. Names are rolling in, including names of writers and editors I know and respect. It's terrible. This is the third or fourth time I've been through this here at the News, and it never gets easier to watch your colleagues suffer, and to wonder if and when your phone is going to ring, and you'll get the call from Human Resources to come downstairs for a talk.
The thing is, even if the broader economy were doing well, newspapers are still in deep recession, and have been for a while. So this is not Alan Greenspan's fault, more's the pity Earlier this year, our publisher gathered all the employees in a hotel ballroom next door to the paper, and presented us all with a very detailed, 90-minute presentation laying the miserable situation for our industry out. It was bracing and depressing, but useful: he demonstrated that it's not just our paper, but all papers, suffering through this rapid and steep decline in circulation and adversiting. It's partly cultural, it's mostly technological, it's a little of this and that, but it's ubiquitous and real, and devastating to men and women who have devoted their lives to the craft of journalism, and who now have to find something else to do.
There's no point in complaining about it. Lots of folks in lots of industries are being laid off right now, or will be soon. Still. Damn. You know, a lot of people love to hate the MSM, and of course I concede that we bring a lot of it onto ourselves. But it's also the case that a lot of the most vociferous haters don't really understand how newspapers work. I'm thinking of one of the friends who got pink-slipped this morning, who crafts beautiful stories about life in our city. There's nothing political about her work. Nothing. She's good at her job ... but there simply isn't the revenue to keep folks like her on staff. These people are the MSM too: ordinary, hard-working and talented men and women who do their best to be fair and interesting and curious in living out their vocations.
If the death of newspapers pleases you, then let me say I just don't get you, don't get you at all. I love newspapers. I really do. Even when I argue with my newspapers, I love them. What we need are better newspapers, not dead newspapers. We are moving, indeed are plainly in, a culture that doesn't value newspapers. And that is a poverty.
Anyway, do me a favor, willya, and look in on the new Dallasnews.com Opinion site, which I'm editing and changing throughout the day. Help keep Your Working Boy's chickens in corn.
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I'm sure you and PB don't need newspapers. It's clear from your posts your heads are filled with FOX-fueled drivel.
Not at all. Fox News would never condemn itself as being part of the problem. Is this evidence of your journalistic acumen? You're simply proving the point made about the self-importance of the Fourth Estate.
btw, has anyone looked at the carbon footprint of newspaper publishing and other effects on the environment?
After finishing my previous post, I saw the following article on the Guardian going to full-text RSS feeds, which is something I wish more newspapers (and this blog--are you listening, Beliefnet?) would do.
http://mashable.com/2008/10/24/full-text-rss-feeds/
man this is sobering, rod
i went thru an experience much like this in book publishing in the '90s
some perspective:
http://mashable.com/2008/10/24/new-york-times-deadpool/
Yes, this decline in newspapers is sad. When I was a boy, I read two newspapers a day, the KC Times in the am and the Star in the pm. I read the DMN in the early 90's to 2002 and it was a truly good paper. I loved Steve Blow and Jaquilynn Floyd as columnists, and the religion section was the best ever.
So much content on the web is based on the work of newspapers (see Google News). I don't know what will happen if they actually go under. I understand what is said above about bias, but usually you could find a thoughtful, conservative voice, Bill Buckley or George Will. That is often not true on the networks or CNN. In fact, I hate watching news on TV, and haven't for years.
My local paper now is getting more and more expensive and thinner and thinner. It used to take about an hour to read the daily and at least a couple to read the Sunday. Now the daily is easily finished off in less than 30 min. and the Sunday in less than an hour. Charging more while offering less is not a good business plan, but I don't know what else the publishers can do.
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