NASCAR writer Ed Hinton leaves Orlando Sentinel

Hinton will land on his feet, but this is daffy. Hinton's stuff, much of it, also ran in the LA Times. This isn't even penny-wise. Somebody will have to cover Daytona, races in LA, Chicago, plus Indy (Brickyard and the 500). Why not a guy who knows his stuff?
One more nail in the coffin.

 

Wasnt his salary divided among Chicago, Orlando (and a third paper I cant recall?)

An above poster is right -- Chicago probably had much to do with his. Hard to believe a paper in the South (as much as you can call Orlando a southern city) would reduce NASCAR coverage.

That said, I imagine it was a likely target. I doubt many higherups understood how passionate NASCAR fans are, and the potential it has for bringing folks into the newspaper. At my first paper years ago, the executive editor made coverage decisions based on what his wife said to him while reading the morning paper. If she didn't like you or what you covered, a move was forthcoming.

 

i love the bullshit line, "With the increasing demand to produce local news, we've decided to eliminate our national NASCAR coverage and focus more on local sports coverage" -- horseshit. just say it's too expensive and stop lying to readers. maybe that's why we're losing credibility, because the higher-ups in this business keep fucking lying to the readers. the readers can see through that shit and it puts into question everything else we say.

 

To be fair, Hinton left on his own, so it wasn't a dumb personnel move.

It was just an asinine corporate decision. But I am sure that they'll get someone to cover local soccer and hopscotch games that will really drive up the readership.

 

Well, considering this was an intraoffice memo, I'm not sure you can call it lying to the readers.

 

Insane. Moronic.

For anyone who held the pipe-dream that private ownership could be a GOOD thing, well that's that.

 

Especially in Florida. Behind college football, NASCAR may have the most rabid fan base in that state. I'd imagine Orlando and Miami will still cover the Florida races, but to drop it nationally?

Stay classy, Tribune. Keep those profit margins high.

 

BINGO!

 

so lying to ourselves

 

That's pretty much it... management lying to itself and expecting the employees to buy into it.

 

Stupid-ass move. I've read Hinton's stuff for a long time -- not as a regular reader, but as someone who knew he knew the sport. Whenever he showed up on one of the talking-head shows, I watched -- I knew I'd learn something.

Would it have been that big of a deal for Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale to absorb the portion of his salary that Chicago wanted to dump? What was he making, maybe $150k tops? Not like he was getting rich off this.