Fired LA Times Editor Jim O'Shea is right on the money!!!

Not sure if anyone else caught this on "Reliable Sources" this morning on CNN.

YES, I watch CNN.

Anyways, fired LA Times Editor Jim O'Shea talked about why he was cut loose and why he believes the budget-cutting mentality in the industry is only going to hurt journalism on the whole.

The man is spot on!

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2008/01/27/kurtz.former.los.angeles.times.editor.int.cnn?iref=videosearch

 

Any comments from the peanut gallery?

 

I agree. Our industry is slitting its own wrists.

 

Not being a peanut, I couldn't say.

 

From the peanut gallery: That's a lot of exclamation points.

 

He's kinda preaching to the choir here.

 

What resonated with me was O'Shea's comments about how, in each person's life and career, you reach a point where you say, "Enough!"

As long as each of us reaches that point individually, the suits never have to worry. They can pick off each of us one by one and count it as salary saved.

If enough of us could reach that point collectively, where the next round of buyouts/layoffs is instead met with a mass walkout, what would the suits do then?

Newsrooms, as a whole, ought to be shouting "Enough!" back at the publishers & owners. If the next 50, 100 or 150 people in the LA Times newsroom joined O'Shea, in unison, in that "Enough!", maybe David Hiller would have blinked.

 

Nah. Wouldn't make a difference. They'd just be happy about all the payroll they trimmed.

 

And, of course, we can't get three people in a given newsroom to agree on what take-out food to order. So expecting a team effort that affects our livelihoods, while somebody thinks it might create an opening and opportunity for him, never will happen.

So we deserve what we get, I guess.