AJC

;D I'm on a roll with blonde moments today. I've been watching the haulers go by today for Dixie's official season opener so I had the track on my mind.

 

"Something interesting" is one way to describe what the AJC is doing. Arson is another way -- as in burn everything down and rebuild on the site. The motivation, from what I understand, is to better spread personnel between the online and the print product. As we all know by now, the Internet is the future, and if you're going to eventually draw 50 percent or more of your revenue from online, you better have more than 10 percent of your people working on that side. With that in mind, the AJC has basically broken its newsroom down into three sectors: news gathering, producing the print product, producing the online product. And they want to do it without adding staff. To do that, they have to take some of their reporters and editors and make them headline writers and copy posters for the online product. In sports, it means anywhere from 8 to 12 fewer writing jobs. No more NASCAR beat writers, fewer backup writers (there will be two on the pro side, one on the college side who also does golf), fewer GAs (two), fewer prep writers. With the exception of the main beatwriters and the columnist, everyone must "reapply" for jobs. Resumes. Interviews. Everything. And there is no longer a true sports editor anymore. There is a person who will oversee sports content for the print product and another to do the same on the digital side. The job currently held by Ronnie Ramos will no longer exist.

 

I have blonde moments everyday. I'm neither fe

What a fantastic way to spend an afternoon.

 

Well Atlanta has been burnt down before.
Managed to come back from that. But I don't think the paper will recover.
The two best regional papers in the country - the AJC and Dallas - are becoming a faint memory.

 

Everyone else standing there was talking about stuff they did together 20 years ago. Well 20 years ago I was in the third grade learning the multiplication tables, so watching the haulers was more interesting to me.

 

I have ties older than you.

 

And to think I've been bumming about getting older. ;D Just kidding.

 

Now I know why Ronnie wants the APSE contest to include web sites.
To all AJC sports staffers:
Be afraid, be very afraid.

 

If vanbrimmer is right and I assume he is, that's the stupidest fucking idea I've heard in eons. This just in-the more space you have to fill, the more people you need to fill it. Want to expand your web site? HIRE PEOPLE! This is just more management bullshit to cover up the fact this industry's biggest problem is that the people at the top are either twelfth-generation family more inbred than the Habsburgs, or Wall Street sharks looking for easy pickings.
We're expanding our web site, with all the wire copy we must use because we took people off their jobs to manage the web site. Brutal.

 

Tiny violin of sympathy====>

 

This is typical newspaper thinking: Let's abandon ship before we hit the iceberg instead of just trying to steer around the damn thing.

Internet revenue accounts for a fraction of the overall pie. But instead of figuring out a way to grow the Web side while maintaining the core print product, many companies are so panicked that they're ready to sacrifice the strength of their papers in hopes of cashing in with Web 2.0.

Haven't we seen this movie before?

 

Do you have ties older than me too? ;D Ok I'll stop now.