Atlanta to cut 80 newsroom jobs

There will always be a need for good journalists, but their work won't be geared toward ink on paper. You still need reporters/editors to staff a 24-hour news cycle, but they'll be producing for web-first, and newspapers with shrinking news-holes and/or readers just need to re-think their sections accordingly.

 

This is all good in theory. Just try telling the callers that the results or standings or whatever they are used to seeing in the paper are online.

They love it, I tell you!

 

The AJC has been moving towards this for some time. A lot of good people will be out of the door. What's worse is that the crappy suburban papers won't look at hiring any of these people. It's a fucked up situation all the way around.

 

The statement in the memo, that it takes $5 to deliver a 50 cent paper to outlying areas, was interesting, if true.

 

And with the deadlines for the outlying areas, it was hardly a daily paper. Essentially put out the Sunday paper late Friday night. And the 3:30 UGA games would jeopardize deadline for the college football section.

 

The way things are headed ... is it not wise to accept the buyout now, when the money is good, than a year or two down the road when the package will be half or a third of what they're offering now? If you get six months severance, that's plenty of time to find a new gig. Or freelance in the time being.

Or just take a damn vacation!

 

This is the part that kills me. The industry is gutting content from newspapers - which readers actually pay for - and putting it online - which is free.

So, refresh my memory again... What's the correct answer when a reader asks why should he continue buying the paper?

 

People that work at the AJC have been told "there will be no sports department" as of June 1 ... and, like you, they really don't even know what that means.

Frightening, huh?

Sounds like the suits ate bad 'shrooms and then decided to run a newspaper.

 

"The Print department will produce the best newspaper possible."

as a friend of mine said, "Do less with less."

 

It is a pretty distressing situation. I brought someone in for a tryout for an entry level reporting position who previously worked at a 200,000 circ daily. If it hadn't been for some issues that came up in his clearance, I would have probably hired him. And I'm currently the managing editor of a weekly community newspaper... and this guy had six years of experience.

I probably wouldn't have considered someone who had that level of experience under normal circumstances considering the fact we pay reporters $18,000 a year in the Washington, D.C. area. But then again, I figured I'd benefit from his experience as long as he was working for us.

I'm about to move on to a big daily as a copy editor/page designer as of March. I'm getting a huge jump in salary from my current gig. Otherwise, I would still have stayed since I've got our paper doing Web-only content and teasing people onto the Web. But we still try to do other things to get people from the Web to the print product as well.

 

Come on, people.
Is anyone really surprised? Do you even think there will be a printed newspaper in 50 years?
My advice to veterans ... enjoy the last days of the newspaper.
For you newbies, consider another line of work.

 

Well, it's not quite THAT bad...

Printed page designers might have to adjust, I suppose.

But writers will still write, editors will still edit, and there will still be production to do, Web pages to "lay out" and photos to edit and place.

All at a faster, more immediate pace, I might add.