Register lays off longtime columnist

[forever_town]

Dumping longtime columnists takes a lot of the heart and soul out of a paper. I doubt that goes over big with the readers who are left, but I doubt the bean-counters care about that anymore.

The only thing ****tard bean counters give a **** about is the bottom line.

They couldn't care less about the reader until the circulation numbers drop. Then they look for scapegoats everywhere but the place they should be looking.

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

I think web readers and newspaper readers are not always the same people with the same interests. Low web hits are not necessarily an indication that Randy wasn't being read on newsprint.

I have seen market surveys in which some of a paper's columnists, often the No. 2 sports guy but in two instances it was our No. 1, had astonishingly low recognition among readers. At one place it was a guy who'd been the No. 2 sports columnist for something like 20 years. He was a bit meek, but not unreadable. Decades later, I still am not sure how it would have been possible that only 20 percent of that paper's readers knew his name.

I'd be surprised if that were the case with Randy. If you lived in the OC for more than a few months and didn't know who he was, you didn't like sports.

 

[YoungOwen]

Based on the comments in this board, some of you might be interested in reading what I wrote the other day about my brother's departure from the Register.

http://owenyoungman.com/2012/03/01/sliding-away/

Thanks,

Owen Youngman

 

[As The Crow Flies]

Another huge factor in online hits is how the story/column is played on the website. I know some newspapers with columnists or beats that are damn near impossible to find unless you navigate around for a minute or two. Unless you're REALLY interested in that team/columnist and know what you're looking for, you're not clicking on that story.

And also - if we're going to start making decisions solely on web hits, we might as well toss out the 1A section at some papers. The things that get hits in my experience: photo galleries, obits, sudoku, sports. Things like city government, crime beat, etc., lag behind.

I remember one day I had a notebook on State U that had a few interesting football tidbits but nothing spectacular. It had more web hits than a breaking story about the city's mayor WHO HAD JUST DIED. Blew me away.

 

[Joe Williams]

So if Web hits are that important, what is the better strategy:

-- Put my best reporter/writer on the prime beat in my paper's coverage area, which is how a lot of places have done it for a long, long time?

-- Or put my best person on a secondary beat, counting on him or her to boost the numbers on that beat while the prime beat would attract readers in our market whether it was covered by Red Smith or Joe Blow?

And if it's the latter, am I obliged to factor that into my star's review, compensation and job security?

I guess columnists are different, in terms of generating measurable readership, but for most of the writers in a newsroom, the song matters more than the singer.

 

[TigerVols]

Based on the comments in this board, some of you might be interested in reading what I wrote the other day about my brother's departure from the Register.

http://owenyoungman.com/2012/03/01/sliding-away/

Thanks,

Owen Youngman

Excellent read. Thanks for posting that!