More from San Jose - UPDATED

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STLIrish: Yes, that rethinking project needed to be rethought. It involved more self-promotion than anything else.

 

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Damn, that is truly sad. The Biz desk is what's made the Merc what it is in Silicon Valley. The Merc kicked ass during the tech boom years and really raised its profile

 

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So Sports goes largely unscathed?

If true, I have mixed reaction: As happy as I am for people involved, and while no news in this sense is good news for our corner of the business, it does scare me a little bit about our perceived readership. Editors apparently will cut good journalists from departments where the topics and issues really matter, but will spare folks in Sports lest they rankle the quiz-kid readers there.

We in Sports don't deserve to be squashed any more than any others in our newsrooms, but we need to be honest about our place in the journalism world. I'd rather see a sports columnist whacked than a watchdog news reporter who might catch the mayor's hand in the till. Once we start to get comfortable with the idea that "the market (i.e., readers) favor sports coverage," then it's only one more step to "the market favors stories about Britney. And puppies . . . F.U."

 

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How bad did sports get whacked in the last round of cost cutting? They might be looking at that too.

Any way you slice it, SJ is definitely a less attractive paper than a few years ago. Thanks, Dean.

 

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From the things I read, it seemed like the "rethinking" project might've been largely responsible for Carol Leigh Hutton's departure as upper management did not appear to be fans of it.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003691880

It seemed like the biggest change the project had led to so far was combining all the paper's feature sections into one section -- basically a reduction. From things I've read about the project, it seemed like at least some of those involved in the project were genuinely hoping that it would lead to something better. But the end result was just more of the same. Whether you're cutting in the name of reducing costs or cutting in the name of improving the product, it's still cutting to the bean-counters, and it seemed like as long as that was all that came from the project, corporate masters were willing to play along and let them entertain themselves. But if such a project really were aimed at innovation and improvement, at some point it's going to call for more resources and re-investment, and considering that the people most responsible for the project have left or are leaving, it seems like the corporate masters have made it pretty clear where they stand on the project.

 

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Philosophically, I disagree with those who want to "blow up the paper," as Carole Leigh Hutton phrased it. I believe that almost everything that's been done in the name of saving newspapers (and the ensuing ego trips for those who want to be first to reinvent the wheel) has hastened rather than delayed their decline, and I think the wisest course is to let everyone else fuck up their papers, and if one of them finally gets it right, copy that. But if that's what led to Hutton's demise, that's silly, too. What kind of message does it send when suggesting a radical idea means off with your head? Either there's a lot more to it than that, or (now here's a radical thought) Hutton deserves our sympathy.

 

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Hutton was a hard-core Knight Ridder person, sponsored by Tony Ridder himself. The new editor, Butler, is a hard-core Singleton person. After Hutton championed this whacko "rethinking" idea, maybe Singleton said to himself, "I'll bring in my old buddy."

Singleton did hire Hutton, but maybe he simply decided he needed a do-over.

The other big "rethinking" proponent in the newsroom had simply latched onto the idea as a means of self-aggrandizement. He wanted to get in good with Hutton and to try to get credit as an innovator. Oops.

 

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I think that newspapers (or news organizations) do need some significant re-invention to go from a declining industry to a growth industry. The problem is that when you are trying to take an existing company that has been around for a century and remake the mold, you're not going to convince owners who are used to 30% profits, who got into this business b/c it produced 30% profits, that those expectations are no longer practical and that the best long-term course for their business is to adopt a model where they can only expect 10-15% profits. That's why I think it might be better for journalism for current newspaper companies to die and have new companies take their place since these new companies would be getting into the business with expectations that are more in line with the present situation rather than being entrenched in business mentality from 50 years ago.

 

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In the generic sense, yes. I look at it like a man in need of a haircut. He goes to the barber expecting he'll look better after the haircut, but there is such a thing as a bad haircut. Not all change is for the better; in fact he could come out looking worse. The new haircut may scare women and children. So, if he cares that much about it, he may evaluate how other people look as they leave the barber before he takes a seat.

I think some honest self-appraisal is necessary. The publisher needs to ask himself, is our editor a true visionary, someone who is likely to solve the industry's woes? Or is he your basic newspaper editor, mouthing whatever is in fashion currently and pretty much copying the other floundering editors? There is nothing wrong with having a basic newspaper editor, at least 99.9 percent of newspapers have one, but chances are slim that an editor like that is going to be the ONE to discover that innovation that saves an industry.

There's nothing wrong with deciding to stop making things worse, putting out a traditional newspaper in the meantime and watching the other papers do dumb stuff. Sitting out this dance or even backtracking a bit may be the wisest temporary course, unless you truly believe your newspaper's editor is the best in the country.

 

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Frank, I agree with much of what you said, but not necessarily on this point. I think newspapers are declining at such a rate that they can't afford inaction. You seem to be saying that not touching the product would more or less patch up the wound for the time being. I see this as more like being on a conveyor belt moving toward a giant blender. You're moving in that direction regardless. Yes, standing still may be preferable than running straight into the grinder, but it also precludes you from finding a possible way off this ride, the only difference is you'll die a few seconds later. What newspapers do need to do is find smarter ways to determine that next course of action. Things like reader surveys or Gannett's mandatory "innovations" from management are crap. The problem also lies in that they are currently only looking at the editorial product and not the business model. This isn't just a case of people not buying papers because they aren't as good as they used to be. It's an entirely new media landscape out there, and a business model built on the conditions of a previous era must evolve. The idea that one golden editor or magic antidote is going to solve the problem is not realistic. It's more likely that it'll be a combination of smaller, continual innovations happening throughout the industry that will stop the tide.

 

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I think you are talking in terms of the entire industry, and I am talking about each paper taking an honest look at its likelihood of finding an answer, and if the answer is "not very," avoid doing anything radical and let other papers take that risk for you. Because they will.

 

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See, I'm not sure how a paper would be able to decide that it's not likely to find an answer. Or, inversely, how any paper would be able to decide that "Yes, we're on the cusp of finding the golden goose that has eluded so many others." The fact is, no one knows for certain if an innovation is going to work. And if you say, "We're not going try anything unless we are 90% certain it'll solve our problems", then you'll almost always never try anything. And if each individual paper adopts the "let someone else take the risk" mentality, then who will actually take that risk? The more papers that are trying, the greater the likelihood of finding solutions. Besides, I haven't really seen many papers make truly radial changes. If anything, the problem is that there aren't enough radical attempts being made.