Join the newspaper revolution

You say you want a revolution,
well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution,
well, you know
we all want to change the world

But when you're talking "amateur production,"
Don't you know that you can count me out.

OUT.

And it isn't gonna be ... shoobee doo wah ... all right

 

To be clear, this is a company-wide thing, not just in Lorain. JRC hired a new CEO at the beginning of the year and changed its business plan altogether. All 18 dailies are doing this.

 

Yeah, I was at a conference today with someone from a JRC shop and the way he explained it was that they can't use any tools they have to pay for, a.k.a. InDesign, PhotoShop, maybe AP (they said they weren't sure about that).

Frankly, it sounds like a demented game of "Name That Tune" to me.

I can put out a newspaper with six people...
I can put out a newspaper with five people...

 

These papers and websites will be made using only free tools available on the Internet rather than the proprietary software and systems typically used in this industry to make a newspaper and its website.

Is this line for real? They expect to publish a paper using freeware?

This may be the absolutely dumbest thing I've seen a suit try in the name of cost savings.

 

A good newspaper keeps track of daily news, explains its meaning to readers and goes in-depth with investigative reporting. With the way newspapers have had their staffs cut it is hard enough just to do one of those. When a newspaper tries to still cover them all, then they offer mediocre reporting in all areas. There needs to be enough staff who are reasonably compensated to perform these functions and offer their readership a good cross section of news from different angles.

As for listening to readers, I work at a small Podunk and one of my schools has won seven district championships - the same as getting to the Sweet 16 in our state - and another school has won one league title and been district runner-up in one sport. Most of its teams are bad and they play in front of a ton of empty seats. But we hear more from these bad school parents and want to know why we are "disrespecting" them. Answer is level of interest. And just to clarify, we put a lot of emphasis on working day-to-day event coverage and we staffed 13 out of 21 games for the bad school's 3-18 basketball team and did phoners for the rest.

 

So imagine Mark Zuckerberg is interning at Gannett, McClatchy or the NY Times one summer a few years back, he mentions to an editor he's been screwing around with this idea for connecting people, he calls it Facebook and he was wondering if he could pitch it to corporate, because he needs financing to develop it.
Does anyone think he would have gotten that meeting with any of them?

 

Ah, exactly what I'm afraid of ... "You cover Podunk Tech all the time, you should really be fair and cover Podunk A&M just as much. Our kids try just as hard as theirs. And they might start getting more people in the stands if you covered them more." Never mind, of course, that Tech is the top-rated team in the state and their opponent that night is No. 2 ... nope, the game between A&M and equally as cruddy Putztown deserves as much attention!

 

Yeah, and what happens when freeware becomes payware? Will they just switch to another system again?

 

Web site in freeware? No problem.

Newspaper in freeware? Have fun paginating in Scribus.

 

If open source is the issue, ditch Windows and go with Linux. I just hope there is a plan to implement open source software and not just use a buzz work, and expect some writer who is tech savvy to figure it all out.

 

Yes, but they're "declaring independence!!" It's the "Ben Franklin Project!!"

How teabaggy.

 

it is not particularly hard to whip up an open source system for a newspaper.
http://theopensourcenewspaper.org/