BH media layoffs

This is sobering.

Death By Inches

 

A good read ... although very depressing. Because it's dead-on accurate.

My main worry anymore isn't that newspapers (and radio, TV, straight-up news websites) will no longer provide the journalism we need as a democracy.

I worry that thanks to staff cutbacks, tweets, aborted attempts at video and countless other panic attacks, coverage of the community has declined so much the death of newspapers won't even be noticed.

We used to joke about offering $20 to anyone in our building — outside of the newsroom — who could name three of the past week's front-page headlines, or at least recall what three of the A1 stories were about. We never would have lost a cent because the ad staff, business office and composing department never read the paper.

Now it's that way for the newsroom, at least regarding the print edition. You can tell when we have our daily budget meeting and stories, photos, columns are on the budget which already ran in that day's paper.

Other than the copy desk (which has to read proofs of the paper each night), NO ONE reads the print edition. Not the reporters. Not the photographers. Not the city editor. Not even the managing editor, who used to read the thing front to back every morning, red pencil in hand. The red-marked paper stuffed in my mailbox used to irritate me, but now I miss it. At least I knew somebody was reading.

 

At several of my career stops, I remember receiving this type of staff-wide memo from top editors: "According to our circulation department, only 43 percent of the newsroom staff takes home delivery of the paper," followed by a "suggestion" that we subscribe. Part of this certainly was a push to build circulation, if only slightly, but it also was an effort to get us to read the paper consistently.

And I also recall strongly-worded memos ordering us to read the paper every day after items that previously ran in print appeared again, or a first-day headline accompanied a second-day story.

 

I have friends at my former shop who I still am in regular contact with.

We went to lunch during basketball season, and he was very upbeat, because after some significant changes (cuts) in coverage area, the constant flow of phone and e-mail complaints from readers had scaled way back to only a trickle.

I told him I see how that makes his life easier, but is that really a good thing? Faithful readers who are engaged with that product, and want to get their news from you, have either given up the fight to see what they want, or have given up on the product entirely. Being the subject of readers' anger may suck, but once apathy takes over, you're dead.

 

Every once in a while, I would get a call from a solicitor, asking me if I wanted to subscribe. I told them the truth: that I worked there and already got the paper five days a week for free, and I didn't want the paper the other two days because I wanted to escape from my job on my days off.

 

That's good. Had a similar encounter with a person at a kiosk at our local paper. She was good at her job, but annoying as shit and didn't want to let me go after engaging with me, giving me all the talking points, the great price offer, etc.

When she gave me an opening, I said, "I used to work for this paper. They laid me off last month after I worked there 21 years." and waited for her reaction. After about 5 seconds of her looking at me with her jaw hanging open, mentally searching for something in her script to handle that, I just walked away.

 

A good article by a former Greensboro staffer. He blames Buffett fir bleeding the paper. Fair enough. But he also quotes Buffet as saying that other than the national papers no one has made maney off of digital and he wonders how many of the 1,300 papers will survive in this country. No one in the world has a better grasp of business than Buffett.

Lots of people are smarter than me. But I think about 75. Basically one per state and a few more in big states with more than one large metropolitan market.

 

Sure, but what he's saying is that Buffett sold us something when he bought those papers (I worked at one and heard the same line), but he never put anything back into his employees and cut just like any other newspaper bigwig. Buffett's company gave us hope but quickly pulled the rug out. I know why, of course, but it still stung after dealing with the awfulness that was Media General. (Greensboro was Landmark, of course)

 

It honestly feels like I am performing my job each night on Pluto. Zero feedback on anything. The centerpiece photo on tomorrow's local page is credited to GoogleMaps, for Christ's sake. Just shut it down.

 

I also remember most of my former papers having a reader or two back in the day who had a lot of time on his/her hands and would call in daily to point out some of the most obscure mistakes imaginable -- a misplaced comma, or some minor fact error 99.9 percent of the readers weren't aware of.

We used to treat such readers with scorn and ridicule and say they needed to get a life.

But now, we'd probably welcome them enthusiastically.

 

Buffett’s MO is to hire people in the industry who know what they’re doing and let them do their job. Unfortunately 100 percent of news executives anymore are incompetent.

 

I made an art out of doing this with phone solicitors for my old paper. I'd reel them in and then leave them stammering when I delivered the punch line.