In April of 2001, I posted what I believe to be the best letter ever written by a journalist as he left a newsroom. The author is Mark Schlueb, who was laid off from the Akron Beacon Journal, a Knight Ridder paper eleven years ago.
Category: Journalism
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‘I would have loved to piss on your shoes’
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Jon Stewart slams Time Magazine (and Pellegrin’s cover image)
The current issue, shown above, the American edition of the magazine has a cover about animal friendships, while the worldwide editions have a cover featuring Italian prime minister Mario Monti
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Man sues GateHouse paper over photo error and ‘meaningless and failed’ correction
His lawyer, David H. Rich, told the site, “The MetroWest Daily News published an inadequate, ineffective, unreasonable, meaningless and failed ‘correction’ in small type buried at the bottom of page 2.”
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The Washington Post, Recast for a Digital Future
A Newspaper, and a Legacy, Reordered
The Washington Post, shrinking its scope as it looks to a digital future, is undergoing one of the most sweeping reorientations of any newspaper in the country.
The outcome of their efforts could offer a high-profile case study on how a company can foster an entrepreneurial, digital culture while remaining true to its heritage. But the transformation has been far from easy. There have been tensions in the newsroom and visible fissures between Mr. Brauchli and his own publisher.
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The Death of the Editor and the Rise of the Circulation Manager
The Death of the Editor and the Rise of the Circulation Manager
A century-old critique of everything that’s wrong with media values today.
via Brain Pickings: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/01/30/bliven/
so long as we have a monetization model of information that prioritizes the wrong stakeholders — advertisers over readers — we will always cater to the business interests of the former, not the intellectual interests of the latter
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Star employees protest newsroom gutting
Star employees protest newsroom gutting
After layoffs, furloughs, a 10 percent salary cut and a proposal to outsource page design and copy editing jobs to Kentucky, ‘Star’ workers say enough is enough.
via NUVO: http://www.nuvo.net/indianapolis/star-employees-protest-newsroom-gutting/Content?oid=2385059
“Is it fair for the CEO to leave with $37 million while we take less and less and less?” Russell asked. “We’re here to say that’s wrong.”
click to enlarge
Indianapolis Newspaper Guild President BobbyKing helped to organize the rally. Rebecca Townsend
The guild, which has a dues-paying membership of about 80 percent of all the employees it represents — including reporters, photographers, copy editors, researchers, page designers and custodial staff — met with Star management following the rally.“We’re concerned about our families’ economic situation and we’re concerned about the future of the newspaper,” King said. “We’re not asking for the moon — just the 10 percent back from two years ago and cost-of-living raises of 3 percent a year.”
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Paton Prepares His Newspapers for a World Without Print
Newspapers’ Digital Apostle
One of the biggest newspaper chains in America is run by John Paton, who thinks that print is, if not exactly dead, dying a lot faster than anyone thought.
he worked his way through a detailed presentation about outsourcing most operations other than sales and editorial, focusing on the cost side that might include further layoffs, stressing digital sales over print sales with incentives, and using relationships with the community to provide some of the content in their newspapers
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CNN Lays Off 50 Staffers, Citing ‘Workflow Changes,’ Reliance On User-Gen
CNN is cutting dozens of editorial jobs following a three-year review of its “workflow” operations, TV Newser reported. According to a memo obtained by paidContent and attributed to CNN SVP Jack Womack, technology and user-gen has made the network a little less reliant on editorial staffers, particularly photojournalists.
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Romenesko Taken to Woodshed for, um, Not Much. And Then Resigns
Romenesko’s Posts Now Toast
Poynter took Jim Romenesko to task for inadequate attribution after exactly zero complaints. In the process, it hastened the resignation of someone who changed the way journalism is covered.
via Media Decoder Blog: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/romeneskos-posts-now-toast/?partner=rss&emc=rss
Yesterday, he was publicly taken to the woodshed in the blog he created for, well, I’m not really sure
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The Newspaper That Almost Seized the Future
The Newspaper That Almost Seized the Future
The San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley’s own daily, was poised to ride the digital whirlwind. What happened?
via Columbia Journalism Review: http://www.cjr.org/feature/the_newspaper_that_almost_seized_the_future.php?page=all
The San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley’s own daily, was poised to ride the digital whirlwind. What happened?
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UK Labour Party wants journalism licenses, will prohibit “journalism” by people who are “struck off” the register of licensed journalists
UK Labour Party wants journalism licenses, will prohibit “journalism” by people who are “struck off” the register of licensed journalists
The UK Labour party’s conference is underway in Liverpool, and party bigwigs are presenting their proposals for reinvigorating Labour after its crushing defeat in the last election. The stupi…
Given that “journalism” presently encompasses “publishing accounts of things you’ve seen using the Internet” and “taking pictures of stuff and tweeting them” and “blogging” and “commenting on news stories,” this proposal is even more insane than the tradition “journalist licenses” practiced in totalitarian nations.
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Rules of the game change as sports journalists compete against teams they cover
Because now anybody can publish, and anybody turns out to really mean “anybody.” That includes teams, leagues, athletic organizations, agents and athletes themselves – all those who used to speak through sportswriters. As a result, the rules of the game are swiftly being rewritten
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Sequel to Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘girl in the window’ story shows challenges of crafting a followup
Poynter:
Melissa Lyttle: It’s the one that was our lead photo the first time around, where [Bernie Lierow is] hugging her and she’s just kind of dangling, lifeless and limp, and not hugging back. And that scene happened again … I made this picture in the living room this time where he was hugging her. It’s very clear: She’s holding his head. She’s kind of playfully biting his nose and kissing him back. … It’s the same down to the fact of lensing and composition and moment.
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This Is Why Your Newspaper Is Dying
This Is Why Your Newspaper Is Dying
Brad Colbow takes a look at why your newspaper is dying on his webcomic The Brads. via Slacktory
via Laughing Squid: http://laughingsquid.com/this-is-why-your-newspaper-is-dying/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+laughingsquid
The reason why we want to expose every shot that we take with the data as far to the right of the histogram as possible is because that’s where the data is!
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News Analysis: Scandals Redefine Rules for the Press in Europe
Scandals Redefine Rules for the Press in Europe
While Britain reassesses the balance between press freedom and privacy, France is grappling with the consequences of its tradition of protecting the powerful.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/world/europe/10press.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
A widening phone-hacking scandal is prompting a broad reassessment of the balance between press freedom and privacy in Britain, even as France grapples with the consequences of its tradition of protecting the powerful.
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White House press pool losing scoops to Twitter
::: The Travel Photographer :::
travel photographer
Link: http://thetravelphotographer.blogspot.com/
Some reporters in the rotating pool of journalists who chronicle the president’s movements are sending tweets and TwitPics before the pool reports go to all of their colleagues, and that’s creating problems
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O’Shea blasts ex-Tribune execs, current editor in new book
“Synergy was the Trojan horse with which FitzSimons and Kern attacked the values of journalists, cut costs and set their focus on local news because it was often cheaper to produce,” writes Mr. O’Shea.
Link: O’Shea blasts ex-Tribune execs, current editor in new book | Poynter.
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Jake Whitney interviews Michael Hastings / Full Metal Racket
Jake Whitney interviews Michael Hastings:
what had been planned as a dissection of Hastings’s major articles evolved into a broader conversation about American exceptionalism, the process and duty of war reporting, the privatization of American war making, and the Pentagon’s intensifying effort to “tear down the wall”
between public affairs and propaganda
