KC Star lays off "about 50"

Flanagan is great and I will miss his column, but Top of the Morning seems a lot easier to cut than a beat guy. Good luck to all at The Star.

 

I think you nailed it, Jeremy. JF is a good guy, but if you're going to lose someone in sports, unfortunately ... damn, I hate writing this sentence.

 

Yeah, not fun sentences to write. Hopefully they will keep the column and have the staff rotate it or have someone else pick it up, like when JF was on vacation.

 

But these people provide direction and leadership for the newspaper. How dare you question those in power! Without them, we'd all be lost, running MLS as the centerpiece every night!

 

Yeah, but that's part of the problem that's going on here. The guys who have these kinds of jobs have worked their way to national jobs or Page 2 columnist jobs earned their way to where they are and essentially fucked themselves in the process.

 

I agree, Mizzou. There's little reward, in fact more risk, for putting in your time, gaining experience and moving up in the profession.

In some cases, getting the next big job moves you that much closer to the unemployment line. Kind of a big jump there, but it just really doesn't seem like anyone is safe anymore. At least, outside the CEOs and managers that have made so many poor decision that have put this profession in the shitter.

 

Yeah, the days of being "rewarded" with a national beat, a features or investigative job, a golf/tennis/boxing/Olympics job or a Page 2 writer are long gone.

You want job security? Make sure you're covering a beat in the paper's backyard. I'd even go as far as to say preps writers have better job security than most, since they can't rely on AP for coverage.

 

You can tell the management sorts. They're the ones the sharks don't eat when tossed overboard. Professional courtesy and all ...

 

Helluva fucking choice anymore. If you're good, you either move up to a plum gig and thereby put your head on the chopping block or you content yourself with being underrewarded and underappreciated, in ways that few professions would expect.

This is getting to be what, I'm guessing, it's like to do hard time. You just grab your ankles and learn to deal with it all. Or you bust out.

 

Okay, most of these layoffs and buyouts don't seem to me to be about losing your "best" people - although in some cases that is true - it is about eliminating positions that you can do without.
Olympics, Page 2, national writers, investigative reporters, takeout writers, consumer affairs reporters, gossip columnists, campus correspondents, etc.

Does that mean papers are going to quit doing those stories? No. Less often, certainly. Is that bad, yes.

But newspapers, it seems to me, are retrenching into basic news organizations. Cutting the frills. Do I like a lot of those frills? Sure do. I've worked as a takeout writer, an investigative reporter, an Olympics reporter, an assistant editor in sports and news, a magazine writer. All that. Am I still working because I'm now a vet at beat reporting? Possibly.
But to say newspapers are losing all their good people because some of these particular positions are being cut is I believe a stretch.

 

No, it's more like the sharks mistake the managers for whale shit.

 

Well, it seems inevitable now that a major paper will fold in the next year or two - even in a one-paper town. Anyone care to hazard a guess which one it will be?