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Sam Zell Has a Plan

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Michael_ Gee, Jun 5, 2008.

  1. Frank_Ridgeway

    Frank_Ridgeway Well-Known Member

    You're right. But on the other hand, they've seen a generation's worth of ideas that failed to stem circulation losses, so maybe there's no reason to believe newsrooms are going to spend the money in ways that will bring results. Some newspapers grew in the 1980s and 1990s, but usually because of dramatic population growth, the death of a competitor or both. But given a neutral playing field, when was the last time we've seen a strategy that worked? I think you're absolutely right that they say whatever they feel will be most palatable. They can't really admit to stockholders that they've lost confidence in the industry's ability to right itself.

    My belief is that four decades of misguided solutions have done much more harm than good, that hard news was the answer all along and the further newspapers get from that, the worse it will get. But at this point I'm not sure it's fixable in the short term. A tipping point has been reached. There's been so much coverage of the industry's problems over the past two years that when you mention newspapers, that's the first thing that crosses people's minds -- death. Even though most other industries would still gladly trade profit margins with newspapers. And traditional newspaper advertisers have not embraced advertising on newspaper Web sites. There's no rational reason to believe throwing money in either direction will give a return in this quarter.

    One of the best newspaper books I've read -- the most inspiring, at least -- was Charles Whited's bio of John S. Knight, who believed spending money on the news product was good business, that readers would notice and appreciate it. I'm not sure that's true in 2008. I think you could upgrade coverage and readers might still have the perception you're shrinking like everyone else.
     
  2. SixToe

    SixToe Well-Known Member

    I agree.

    They pick up and read crappy publications because in a lot of cases that's all they have. Some of the ones who do not quit reading because they grew tired of reading shit. Winning them back would be a struggle, but it could be done.

    I think spending money in the newsroom for the product, promoting quality journalism in print and not videos of kids tumbling at a park concert, and doing solid work would be noticed by readers. They notice when the type point size changes or when a comic strip is killed or a new syndicated columnist is added to the Op-Ed page.

    But managers won't do that. They would rather slash and burn, grind writers into drones doing print-video-radio-blogs-podcasts and other shit, provide a lesser product supposedly spiced up with frilly trappings or "specialty" niche publications and then still moan about not being able to connect with a demographic that doesn't read papers anyway and may not for another 10-15 years.

    Why the fuck would you take a strong, well-read columnist or beat writer and put them in front of a television camera to do 3-minute videos he or she did not train to do, doesn't care to do it and makes a half-assed effort? If they are good in front of a camera you run the risk of losing your effin' stud to the WWL or a magazine, or a bigger paper.

    I believe the majority of people who read newspapers don't do it because it has a society photo or Sudoku or a weekly entertainment tab full of concert blowjobs. They pick it up because they want the news, hard news, news about their area and state and a little on the international scene. All the rest is extra.

    The "extra" is being pushed to the forefront, though, at the expense of solid news and that's one thing helping to kill newspapers.
     
  3. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    If it's inch counts that matter, what does that do within a staff, where people are assigned roles that more or less dictate their inch count in any week, month or year? You're going to be pitting colleague against colleague, coveting someone else's assignment because it automatically leads to more copy, while some staffers are set up to fail and lose their family's income -- regardless of their talents or work ethic -- by being shoved onto less prolific beats. We ain't ever seen this type of cutthroat before!

    As for copy editors, I figure it's coming real soon that -- once they thin the herd of reporters -- they'll impose a strict ratio of X number of copy editors per reporters in a department or newsroom. And it will be a very small number, compared to what most places have now. Everyone's work load will go way up, in terms of quantity. Quality? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

    These suits and blowhards hate journalism, hate journalists, hate the readers and resent the hell out of the fact that they can't simply sell 64 pages of 100 percent, complete advertising on a daily basis.
     
  4. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    In the E&P story about this, there was this nugget:

    Michaels also addressed the number of pages that make up Tribune newspapers, noting that only about 12% of costs come from the gathering of news while the rest of the cost is in production and printing.

    So even though journalists make up only a portion of the 12 percent of costs, that is where owners and publishers have been most aggressive in cutting. Buyout and layoffs, buyouts and layoffs, buyouts and layoffs -- they're a bunch of monkeys, aping each other ... cuz they can. Buncha fuckin' frauds is more like it.
     
  5. SixToe

    SixToe Well-Known Member

    Husband: "Hon, give me the Sports section."

    Wife: "It sure is thin today."

    Husband: "Ha-ha, that crazy real estate troll, Sam Zell, must be saving a few dollars. It's only half a page and just scores with the tiny numbers and letters they use for baseball boxscores. But it tells me to go to the Internet for all my news. I guess we don't need to keep subscribing to this anymore."

    Wife: "But it has cute puppies on the front page. Let's keep it for another six months to see if it gets any better."
     
  6. Desk_dude

    Desk_dude Member

    I think the pages per journalist is derived by adding up the total number of pages in a year and dividing it by the total staff. That includes everythng, including wire pages.

    The 50 percent ratio doesn't include classified advertising.
     
  7. FileNotFound

    FileNotFound Well-Known Member

    Private ownership = so much better than corporate ownership.

    Oh, wait.
     
  8. steveu

    steveu Well-Known Member

    At this rate, I don't want to be. If this keeps up, I'd have to have people taste my food and start my car.
     
  9. Double Down

    Double Down Well-Known Member

    Zell has already said he doesn't really care about subscriptions. He thinks far too much money is wasted trying desperately to keep circulation numbers up, and he thinks eventually the Trib papers should just let that go and focus on advertising. So thousands of cancelled subscriptions won't mean squat to him.
     
  10. forever_town

    forever_town Well-Known Member

    Try telling the bean counters that.
     
  11. WriteThinking

    WriteThinking Well-Known Member

    I had avoided this thread to this point, largely because I had so much to say that I didn't even know where to start, or when I might stop.

    So, I think I'll let Kevin Roderick of LAObserved.com speak for me. His take about sums it up for me, starting with the second graf.

    http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2008/06/foreign_editor_steps_asid.php#more

    This business needs people willing to put the money and time that's needed into it. And what's more, those who run it need to recognize that stories, papers, reporters and roles are not one-size fits-all, and cannot be rightly or fairly judged that way.

    They need to realize that there is judgment, and various different values, involved -- depending on the area, the paper and the people running it -- that do not lend themselves to simply applying an inch count to them.

    Randy Michaels says journalists' productivity has never been measured before, that "This is a new thing."

    It is?

    Doesn't this guy know that reporters' productivity is measured -- and evaluated for value -- every day (in the paper), every year (in staff performance reviews), and every time (in the office), that someone surreptitiously types names into the system specifically to check and compare byline counts, story types, cover pieces -- and, for that matter, inch counts -- for anyone, at any given time?

    (And no one should think that that doesn't happen).

    Just about the only thing that isn't necessarily measured by such cut-and-dry numbers, of course, is the consistency of strength and quality, and, as Frank Ridgeway, and also, Kevin Roderick, have mentioned, the impact and import of the work.

    And unfortunately, this is critical, or, at least, it should be.

    No matter the story, or the beat, or a reporter's place in the pecking order, his or her work can and should be done well, and, if it is, that should be recognized in whatever way may be needed so as not to simply get painted by numbers.

    Usually, this process calls for judgment and thoughtfulness, and the numbers game that these guys want to play lends itself to neither of those things.

    OK, I'll stop now. I'm disgusted enough.
     
  12. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    I have included byline counts in reviews many times. If you are a prep writer and crank out 600 stories a year, that's super. If you are a prep writer and eek out 150, that's not super.

    Other than that, they basically are a signal to the higher ups that most sports writer have a lot more bylines than anyone else at the paper.
     
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