So this is a new one

[JayFarrar]

One of the local blogs, after hearing the news of layoffs at our shop, is calling on people to cancel their subscriptions.
But they do it out of love.
They just hate to see their local paper die a slow painful death, so they figure if everyone cancels their subscriptions. The paper's death will be a quick one.

I don't know what they are trying to be, but I do know it is failing us who crave local news and it is too painful to enable their failings anymore with a subscription.

One listed failing was not having the right neighborhood on some of the crime reports.

Oh, and they are pissed we didn't do endorsements.

If the paper doesn't care enough about the local alderman races to endorse candidates, why should we care about the paper?.

That's actually decent. I don't know why we didn't endorse local candidates either.

 

[DemoChristian]

The endorsement argument is BS. People would be bitching about who you endorsed and say, "If they are so stupid as to support Candidate X, they deserve to die."
You can never win with endorsements.

 

[Mark2010]

sometimes ain't no one worth endorsing. Are you listening, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama?

 

[Joe Williams]

We bat around on here the idea from time to time of principled worker-bee journalists walking out en masse as the ultimate protest of bad newspaper management. (It's obvious daydreaming, because such a move would have no chance -- NO CHANCE -- of ever happening, as long as real life and its bills intrude on our principles.)

But it sure would be something if readers of one particular paper "walked out" en masse, sparked by this blog's urging. The "cost" to the readers of going elsewhere would be much less than to us. Even for those who'd have to purchase computers!

 

[JayFarrar]

For some context, the blog in question is acting in its own financial interest.
The owner tried to start a local online only newspaper and hired a reporter to go out and his announced intention at the time was to destroy the paper.
The owner's expectations were that online ads would generate $50k annually and that it would cover expenses. He expected to be profitable within three months.
That failed miserably and shut down after roughly six weeks.
Now, he is trumpeting a deal with Google News, and now he's on the ripping the paper bandwagon.
It is all because he thinks the Google deal will turn into real money, if he can get rid of competition. His site consists of press releases, two grafs rewrites of the stories my paper has already done or links to other papers in the region.
Most of the web traffic consists of people commenting, and posting slanderous and or libelous statements about various local figures.
He doesn't have to worry about getting sued. He doesn't have any real expense in news gathering and he's about a third of the smart he thinks he is.
I guess that's the media world we live in.