"There was a land of Publishers and Editors called the Newspaper Business... Here in this pretty world Journalism took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Reporters and their Enablers, of Anonymous Sources and of Stringers... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization Gone With the Wind..."
With apologies to Margaret Mitchell...
http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=12031
Topic: Letters Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 11/21/2006 2:13:51 PM
Title: Blame Downie?
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
From TREVOR BUTTERWORTH: Rem Reider is right to say that the departure of Jim VandeHei and John Harris is a "crushing blow" to the Washington Post, but he misses the salient point: this is a failure of management and leadership at a newspaper rather than a cypher for technological change and the news business.
No company can survive without cultivating and keeping talent. Leadership, as Jack Welch has tirelessly pointed out, is finding the right people for the job, nurturing them, and giving them the opportunities to do more and to do better. The Post has a website, possibly the best day-to-day coverage of national politics of any publication in the U.S., a formidable brand name and - despite its current economic woes - huge resources, so the departure of two of its top journalists suggests an extraordinary lack of imagination, flexibility, and management skill in conceiving and executing the mission of the newspaper. All of which concurs with the jibes one hears in journalistic circles in Washington about the Post foundering in entrenched mediocrity.
Perhaps Leonard Downie did everything he could to keep his reporters
at the paper. But to the world, it looks like the kind of failure that normally precedes a change at the top. [Permalink]