Posted on 05/22/2006 7:27:52 AM PDT by abb
A YEAR ago, I was talking on the phone to the editor of a major newspaper for a column I was working on. With business concluded, we had The Conversation, the one about the large boulder that seems to be tumbling through the newspaper business. "How old are you?" he asked. Forty-nine, I told him. "Me too. Do you think we outrun this thing?"
I said I thought so. But I wonder whether it will be the same for my friend Michael Schaffer.
At 32, Michael Currie Schaffer — one of two Michael Schaffers who writes for The Inquirer — is one of many bright young things in journalism. A Fulbright scholar, he was a freelancer who quietly elbowed his way into a staff job at The Washington City Paper when I was the editor there. He became the second in command at age 25, and ran the paper for a month while I was sick.
He became a national correspondent at U.S. News & World Report and then moved on, with a great deal of excitement, to The Philadelphia Inquirer, as a general assignment reporter. He did a tour as a war correspondent in Iraq, and is now working in the City Hall bureau. After three years at the paper, Michael loves the job.
But in March, The Inquirer was sold by Knight Ridder to the McClatchy Company, which promptly put it back on the block because even though it makes $50 million or so a year, it is not growing at a rate that suits McClatchy's corporate strategy. So sometime in the next few weeks, McClatchy will sell The Inquirer, a former crown jewel of American journalism that won 17 Pulitzers in 18 years during its heyday in the 1970's and 1980's under the editor Eugene L. Roberts.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Pinging with Monday Morning Good News
perhaps if all the major dailies stopped writing fiction every day...
Wring your hands and bemoan the provicialism of the consuming public as your value erodes daily and your death spiral continues.
I believe there is a market for a newspaper that emphasizes good news. Write about schools where students are doing well. Find businesses that are hiring. Profile home renovation firms with happy customers. Talk to veterans who are proud of our achievements in the Middle East. Have a religion section.
Unhappy news exists, and probably can't be entirely avoided -- but I would buy a newspaper which gave me 100 reasons to smile each day.
Unfortunately, pandering to the Victim Class would not be served by this strategy.
Other than a couple of the big name newspapers (NY Times, Washington Post and maybe the LA Times), most newspapers just take AP stories, cut them to fit the space available and print them. They might produce something original for local interest, but their national news stories are exactly the same as the ones in every other newspaper in the country. Why should I bother reading them when I can go back to the original source and get the full story on the net.
After doing a search on Michael Currie Schaffer's past articles, Michael probably needs to read my tagline.
I read the Daily News for it's excellent sports coverage, but I try to avoid the editorial page because it usually raises my blood pressure. But I refuse to pay them one thin dime, I pick up a co-worker's copy when he's done with it.
Maybe the new owner will "contract" the paper into a sports daily, leaving the moonbats with the Stinkquirer, and the free rags that pollute Center City.
Even our rabbit won't crap on the Inky.
ping
The Inquirer I think that is sold on every check out line in every grocery store in America. Gee, I really don't know why it would be getting hurt. A fine quality paper that it is of course.
"How old are you?" he asked. Forty-nine, I told him. "Me too. Do you think we outrun this thing?"
David may want to bank on something other than his corporate pension fund given that many (all?) publicly traded media companies spent nearly all of their cash over the years to acquire a massive monolithic intangible asset named Goodwill, which typically carries a balance orders of magnitude greater than liquid corporate assets such as cash or marketable securities.
But I'm interested in what comes next, and some of those versions of the future are pretty unappealing to me," [JournalistTM Michael] said.
Conservatives would likely find Mike's probable preferred socialist versions of the future unappealing.
According to The Columbia Journalism Review, Mr. Ridder responded to a huge prize year in 1987 by saying that he would like the paper "to win a Pulitzer for cost-cutting."
At long last they finally got around to creating a Pulitzer category that appeals to conservatives. LOL.
He mentioned John Carroll, who left the Tribune Company after tiring of spending all of his time on the cost side of the business. "John said there used to be a dozen ways to measure success in our business and now there is only one."
The money quote of this story. LOL.
It's all so easy when you have a monopoly. And it's all too hard when that monopoly goes away....
The following is a comment by a free lance journalist on this sale:
AN OPEN LETTER TO BRIAN TIERNEY
Dear Mr. Tierney:
Congratulations on your recent purchase of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. I have read that you intend to respect the editorial independence of the publisher, editors and reporters. You realize that, on the face of it, this sounds to the Christian and pro-life communities, to put it bluntly, a code phrase for maintaining the leftist bias of these two institutions. Let me elaborate a bit.
I work as a free-lance journalist for newspapers in the Northeast and I have been to community meetings where the Inquirer and the Daily News have been referred to as Izvestia and Pravda, and the Knight-Ridder chain as ITAR-TASS east, and not just by spectators in the audience. That’s how widespread and how obvious the leftist bias (pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, anti-Christian and anti-police) of your purchases has become in latter years.
Your statement that the “next great era of Philadelphia journalism begins today” and the above background raises some interesting questions.
First, if you are serious, you cannot maintain the ideological status quo at those papers, can you?
Second, how will keeping “hands off” the editorial staff help the papers correct this bias and the perception that both papers represent values and ideologies not shared by significant segments of the Delaware Valley?
Third, how will retaining blatant anti-Christian bigots on your staff rebuild your circulation?
Pursuant to these questions, I as a representative of the pro-life and Christian communities, respectfully call upon you to dismiss Tom Ferrick, John Grogan, and Tony Auth.
I also call upon you to add one or more columnists from Town Hall to your editorial pages on a regular, recurring basis AND to issue a standing invitation to local conservative writers to submit columns and guest essays on issues of the day AND to publish them.
I also ask you to realize that members of the Christian community have in the past boycotted your advertisers and turned down repeated phone calls to buy subscriptions. These efforts were largely piecemeal and ineffective, but this may not always be the case.
And finally, Mr. Tierney, I do wish you luck in launching that “next great era of journalism” you spoke so eloquently of. I trust you are, in addition to being an astute businessman, a man of reason. If so, we in the Christian community will look forward to a long and happy relationship with the Inquirer and Daily News.
George Tomezsko,
Editor, Voices For The Unborn
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