Orange County Register to have staffers pictures accompany each story

One of the nicest and biggest guys in the business, Jim Murray, once told me, "They don't give a damn about us." The best piece of advice I ever got.

 

This is one of those things where some highly-paid corporate jackass has to justify his salary for sitting around in the office. So they come up with "Let's put reporters' photos in the paper!"

And it's another idea in a long list of ideas that will not bring one reader to the paper.

 

I'm telling you ... there's more value to this idea than that.

You might ultimately be right -- but adding faces to who's covering things for you is NOT a totally brainless, out-of-left-field idea.

 

Wasn't this a fairly common practice at old MultiMedia papers in the late 1970s, early 1980s? It was a way of putting a "face" with a story, I think. For some reason, you were supposed to feel better that a guy who looked like he just got off the Triumph tour bus was writing about city council.

 

I admit the 4 inches was hyperbole on my part. In reality it probably won't take too much more room than the "Reporter John Doe can be contacted at jdoe@podunkpress.com" taglines. I just know when space gets tight as it is and you're already maxed out on leading, tracking and kerning, any extra space at all becomes precious.
Mugs with the stories online, to me, is a different issue.

 

That's a pretty accurate assessment. Sources tell me that the editor in question (Brenda) spends the majority of her time thinking of ways to redesign the OCR. She's just another assistant editor taking up space in a near-empty newsroom.

 

I got over the vainglory produced by having a byline years ago, and this seems just another way to feed a reporter's ego. I just want to write, and I often wish nobody knew my name or gave a crap who I am. I know a fellow reporter who thinks we shouldn't use bylines at all, but that's kinda extreme. Maybe I should use a fake name like radio jocks do. I'd use William H. Macy (that dude can act).

 

If you're actively avoiding avenues that can help you build a name-brand reputation for yourself as a reporter, you're actively slitting your own throat in terms of future employment, for reasons that have been stated earlier.

I'm not sayin' it's all good and proper in the context of journalism's higher mission, and I'm not sayin' it's comfortable for people who are trained to be observers instead of actors, but I am sayin' it's the reality of today's media marketplace.

And tomorrow's.

 

If you're a reporter, you're actively slitting your own throat in terms of future employment. No need to go further than that.

 

Well, there's that ...

 

I'd love for this to happen everywhere I write. It just so happens that I'm an incredibly handsome young man who can boost female readership with smiles more than I can with keystrokes. Unleash me upon the masses, with my iStockPhoto model good looks and mediocre wordsmithery.

 

I think it's a cool idea. When I was a kid reading my local metro, I always wondered what my favorite reporters looked like and even had idea in my head based on their names. That paper now has a link to a brief writer's bio with a picture linked from their bylines on the website. I love coming across a new reporter's byline or one I just haven't seen yet.