Posted on 04/16/2008 7:01:21 AM PDT by abb
WASHINGTON Among the gossip and trends swirling at the Capital Conference/combined media convention here is the reality that more and more editors are wishing they could get out of the newsroom earlier in their careers.
During hallway chats and bar stool gatherings, in between the sessions at the Washington Convention Center, several editors said the state of the industry – with more cuts, more responsibility for Web, and an unknown future -- has more of their colleagues talking about wanting to hang it up well before retirement age.
“That discussion is going on among a lot of people,” said Chris Peck, editor of the Commercial-Appeal in Memphis, Tenn. “Do I want to do this anymore? Do I want to be part of the group changing the business model? What is happening is that the job of an editor has changed. You have to be in the frame of mind to help that business model.”
Peck added that “For some editors, they just don’t want to do it. For ethical reasons, or they don’t have the skill sets. That is happening.”
Others around the joint ASNE/NAA/NEXPO confab admitted that there is a trend of some editors wanting to get out of the newsroom and pursue other career outlets, such as teaching.
Martin Kaiser, editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for 11 years, said some of the trend is based on editors being unwilling to get involved in the current changing approach of newspapers. “That doesn’t surprise me, it is hard. Change isn’t easy,” he said. “You want to be able to leave a place better than you found it, that is harder, especially if you have fewer people.”
Ron Royhab, top editor of The Blade in Toledo, Ohio, for the past 16 years, said he is not seeking an out, despite being 65. But he agreed that the editor’s post had greater challenges and likely sparked more people wanting to leave. “It is a tougher job than in the past,” he said. “The economy, the difficulties the newspaper industry is having. I have heard a lot of people say, ‘the good old days’.”
Susan Goldberg, who had been editor of the San Jose Mercury News until last year when she left for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, admitted “the job is very, very difficult. For some people, it is time to try something else.” Noting she is in no hurry to leave, she added, “it is harder than it ever has been in my memory and a lot of people feel that way about it.”
Bob McCartney, assistant managing editor/metro at The Washington Post, said he feels lucky to be at such a great paper when so many other newsrooms are in depressing times. “It is harder than it once was,” he said about newsroom leadership in general. “Clearly, the pressure -- you’ve got to do everything you once did before, and with the Web and fewer resources.”
One longtime editor who left the newsroom for teaching last year is Rick Rodriguez, former editor of The Sacramento Bee and soon-to-be instructor at Arizona State University. “Right now, editors are under more pressure than at any time in recent memory,” he stated. “You can hear it in the concerns of my colleagues, you can see it in their faces.”
Pam Fine, a longtime managing editor, most recently at The Indianapolis Star, plans to leave later this year for a teaching post at the University of Kansas. But she says she is not leaving out of any desire to depart the newsroom, saying “it is a natural extension of the newsroom to work with young people and share what we know and create good journalists.”
ping
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/15/AR2008041503159.html
Newspaper Publishers Chasing the Wrong Story
By Steven Pearlstein
Wednesday, April 16, 2008; D01
There’s a certain irony that, as the spectacular Newseum opens on Pennsylvania Avenue to celebrate the accomplishments of American journalism, within the media there is growing concern that our best days may have come and gone.
That’s bound to be Topic A among the newspaper editors and publishers holding their annual meeting in Washington this week against a backdrop of accelerating declines in circulation and advertising revenue. These declines have contributed to a noticeable erosion in the quantity and quality of journalism in most of the country’s newspapers, which in turn may be contributing to further declines in circulation. Many wonder whether the industry is caught in a downward cycle from which it may never emerge.
The basic story here is that an industry that was based, largely, on highly profitable local monopolies suddenly has discovered that it has competitors using new technologies to deliver news and advertising at significantly lower cost. This competition has not only eroded operating profit margins that routinely exceeded 20 percent but called into question a business model in which the cost of gathering the news was financed by advertisers who had no choice but to pay the price and pass it on to their customers.
snip
“Others around the joint ASNE/NAA/NEXPO confab admitted that there is a trend of some editors wanting to get out of the newsroom and pursue other career outlets, such as teaching.”
Well, of course! It’s easier to brainwash kids than adults.
Good, honest work beckons.
Big Board Sends Journal Register Home — With Final Gain Of A Penny
By Mark Fitzgerald
Published: April 15, 2008 11:00 PM ET
CHICAGO Journal Register Co. Tuesday ended trading for good on the New York Stock Exchange barely on the up side, gaining 1 cent to close at a price of 32 cents.
It was an exit from the Big Board that was predictably more a whimper than a bang, as the debt-laden publisher of the New Haven Register and the Trentonian in New Jersey ended its final trading session before it is delisted.
Volume of 1.3 million in the stock, which had the ticker symbol JRC, was more than twice its normal trading.
Journal Register has already told the NYSE it will not appeal the delisting decision, and that it will continue trading on the over-the-counter markets.
The newspaper sector was mixed with no big swings Tuesday.
Media General Inc. (MEG) was the biggest percentage loser, ending the day at $14.02, down 46 cents, or 3.18%. On Tuesday, Media General got more bad news in its proxy battle with Harbinger Capital Partners over three Class A seats on its board of directors.
The influential RiskMetrics proxy advisory firm recommended withholding votes for management’s three incumbents — and voting for two of Harbinger’s three nominees.
Mark Fitzgerald (mfitzgerald@editorandpublisher.com) is E&P’s editor-at-large
Links referenced within this article
mfitzgerald@editorandpublisher.com
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/mailto:
Find this article at:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003789915
Makes no diff. The “Editors” of newspapers today do little more than run spell checker on the article before giving a green light to run it. They do very little review of the stories, check facts, etc. So I’m not surprised they want to get out of the job sooner rather than later.
http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzsale0416,0,635567.story
Newsday stock-swap sale could save Zell $245M
BY ELLEN YAN
7:08 AM EDT, April 16, 2008
Sam Zell, currently $12.8 billion in debt with the Tribune Co., is reportedly structuring a possible sale of Newsday in a way that could save him hundreds of millions of dollars in capital gains taxes.
The idea of a non-cash asset swap has been swirling about talks with suitors for Newsday, including News Corp. chief and New York Post owner Rupert Murdoch and New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman.
In structuring any type of deal to avoid more financial liabilities, Zell may be able to save upward of $175 million on the capital gains tax and possibly more than $245 million, according to tax experts.
The calculations take into account a capital gains rate of 35 percent or higher on the difference between Newsday’s current value for tax purposes, $69 million, and what it could sell for. The $69-million figure was set when the paper was sold to Times Mirror in 1970, according to several people familiar with the finances, and that didn’t change when Tribune bought Times Mirror in 2000 and then went private in 2007. Media analysts estimate that the paper now coule fetch $500 million to $800 million.
snip
"If you want to advocate, get out of here and go to Law School."
Bulletin to these whining editor mediots:
There is little demand for pushing and spinning for left wing agendas posing as news.
News reporting should be unbiased reporting of events that happen not agenda driven left wing bs posing as news.
Solution: Lie more efficiently.
Newspapers thought they could pull in this pre-packaged news and cut out a lot of local coverage costs, by sounding more “worldly” and “informed.” All they did was sign their own death certificate.
We can get more current, more accurately digested news from reading between the lines of the free media these same papers are forced to provide. Although it is more work, we can get underneath the bias and learn the truth much more effectively than ever before.
It just happens to also put a crap-load of liberals out of work (liberals apparently make up 90%+ of those in media).
It's amazing that something so much healthier for people winds up putting liberals on the curb, asking for handouts or pleading for a different job.
"If you want to advocate, get out of here and go to Law School."
I'm shocked, SHOCKED. I would have thought these dedicated people would stick around and work without pay so they could help change the world. I thought they were all idealists if they went to J-School. I guess they want job security and better wages while they reshape the country. LOL!
Out of all the articles by academia/dinomedia that have been posted on FR by our dinomedia watchers, I can't recall a single one even hinting at the first question they should all be asking themselves - "what about content?". Academiapeople and newspeople are truly brain dead, OR they somehow feel they can ride out the current storm and are being careful not to raise the specter of advocacy journalism.
Won't change anything; they're on their way to the tar pits regardless.
Well golly gee. Real businesses do it all of the time. Something about remaining competitive.
And I note; our armed forces (which the newspapers hate) has done a phenomenal job of continuous evolution, streamlining, and integration of new technology. Of course, they had to do it while constantly dealing with enemies; foreign (as in the Global War On Terror), and domestic (as in treasonous liberal/socialist/communist Democrats and their propaganda arm...the newspapers).
So cry me a river, newspapers. Time for you to die.
This happened to me. After almost eight years in a newsroom, the last four as editor, I finally got a bellyfull of cynicism, long hours and poor pay.
This in itself will become an anachronism. The rise of "journalism" occurred solely due to the creation of local monopolies which could afford to pay professional level salaries.
Now that the news/commentary business model is flattening out again, we're seeing the return of poor, struggling scribes ie the classic ink-stained wretches; except in this case, content is published on-line. Their success will be based on a combination of how well they write and how hungry they are to do the job in the first place.
We can already see it happening with the division of lib/con web sites like HuffPo, HotAir, Ace, etc.
A master at avoiding capital gains tax, Zell could swap private Newsday stock for the suitor's stock, said tax and media analysts.On this day after income tax day allow me to note that capital gain shell games often merely sugar coat the bitter pill of capital loss. Capitalists ultimately want capital gains instead of tax benefits.
Some more stuff on “how it used to be when we were a monopoly.”
http://nowthedetails.blogspot.com/2008/04/decline-of-cbs-news-why-are-we-not.html
Saturday, April 12, 2008
The Decline of CBS News: Why Are We Not Surprised?
In an article in the April 12th New York Times, the problems of CBS have been building for a while, says the author, Jacques Steinberg.
Katie Couric was brought in to be the $75 million dollar fix to resolving the once great “Tiffany Network’s” perpetual loser status.
At the same time, assets were being stripped from the network news and from local affiliates’ ability to cover the news locally and provide coverage for the network.
How bad is it? Bad when one considers how far CBS has fallen.
Full disclosure: as a 20-something grad student in London, back in the 1970s, I was hired in my first job of journalism at the CBS bureau to be the overnight”kid.” My job was to be in the bureau from 6 pm to 9 am the next day a couple of nights a week. It involved answering the phone, watching over the wire service machines to make sure they didn’t run out of paper, wake up the bureau chief if one of those machines sounded an “urgent” (also known as a “five bells”) and let him know what happened. If he deemed the story “urgent” enough, then I was to try to find a correspondent and get him or her on the story.
Pretty exciting for a kid who had mostly spent his time in dusty archives researching for a thesis on the French Resistance.
The bureau chief in 1972 was Phil Lewis, a crusty New Yorker, straight out of central casting. In fact, I got the job through an early form of sexual harrassment!
A friend at college recommended me for the job. I went to the bureau for an interview, then located opposite Harrod’s department story on the fashionable Old Brompton Road.
Lewis looked at me. “Ya got a girl friend?” he growled through the cigaret smoke.
“Not a serious one,” I answered.
“Ya got the job,” he said. “But ya gotta do me a favor. My niece is in town from New York. Take her out. Show her the sites. Show her a good time. But not too good, if ya get my drift. Get her back to the house by midnight. If she has a nice time, ya got the job.”
I took her out to a pub and to dinner. Forgive me, but I can’t recall her name. I got her back by 12 and called Phil the next day.
“Ya got the job kid. Be here at 6 tonight. By the way, it pays 18 pounds a week.” Click.
The CBC London bureau in the early to mid-1970’s was amazing. Journalists such as Charles Collingwood, John “Jack” Lawrence, Bob Simon and Bob Dyck were based there. “60 Minutes” had a full time presence and Mike Wallace was a regular visitor (at one time he came over to me as I was working on the teletype and pocketed my cigarettes!).
Sally Quinn came over to give color commentary as Princess Anne’s wedding. I was the voice in her ear telling her who the BBC was showing in Westminister Cathedral when their cameras would pan the crowd and CBS was taking the feed to New York.
London was the center of CBS News activity. Film (yes, it was still film back then) was shipped from Viet Name to New York via London. It was developed and edited for the Cronkite show and one of my duties was to drive out to Heathrow to deliver the finished product to PanAm for shipment to New York. The Irish Republican Army had begin its bombing campaign in London in those days. One night I was snoozing on Collingwood’s couch when the windows blew in and I was covered with glass after the IRA decided to bomb Harrod’s department story across the street.
Satellites were just coming into service. And CBS would rent the BBC satellite to feed New York. It was expensive and it was only done for the most urgent news stories.
These were formative days for me. The journalists I met were committed to the idea of News as a proud civic duty combined with adrenalin. My desire to be part of that life was formed by those experiences.
By the mid 1980’s (long after I left London), CBS reached its high water mark: 38 foreign correspondents in 28 bureaus around the world. Today, CBS has five correspondents in four bureaus.
Even Couric, who has a great on air presence just can’t deliver the depth of journalism that CBS was once able to provide. No one person can.
As CBS strips assets away from its news service and from its affiliates, no amount of charm, happy talk or voice over visuals assembled in New York can compensate. TV News with its corporate and stock market obligations probably will never go back to where they were. The hedge fund managers who have undue influence would never allow it.
The opening of the Newseum in Washington seems to me to be an acknowledgement of that.
News has now been stuffed and mounted as if it were an adjunct of the Museum of Natural History. But more on that later.
The challenge for the rest of us is to lament was we’ve lost, but find new ways to provide real coverage.
Suggestions welcomed.
posted by Jeffrey Dvorkin | 3:42 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/15/dan-rather-on-les-moonves_n_96790.html
Dan Rather On Les Moonves, The “Evening News,” And Who Should Replace Katie When (Not If) She Goes
Huffington Post | Rachel Sklar | April 15, 2008 02:48 PM
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