The Last Straw - Editor in Spokane Resigns

On The Media - NPR ^ | October 10, 2008 | Bob Garfield

[CreviceTool]

For Steve Smith, former editor of The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, innovation didn't stop the decline of his paper. Since becoming editor in 2002, Smith worked hard to modernize The Spokesman-Review. He streamed editorial meetings online and greatly expanded the online staff.

The paper collaborated with an AM radio station and added a sound studio. And last December, Smith even cut the staff from 140 to 104. But when he was informed of another round of layoffs, including much of the online staff he'd recently hired, he refused, and last week he resigned.

He’s been in the newspaper business for 36 years and he’s taken quite a few hits for quitting now, but he says he simply wasn't willing to impose more changes that he felt would harm the paper irreparably.

[CreviceTool]

Boo Hoo - too bad for the guy who outed popular, socially conservative Spokane Mayor, Jim West, in a very questionable sting operation. This sicko so-called newsman chased Jim West to an early grave. It was covered in painful detail by PBS FRONTLINE: "The paper's stories sparked city and federal investigations and a Dec. 2005, recall election in which West was voted out of office. On Feb. 16, 2006, the FBI closed its 10-month investigation, finding no evidence to charge West with the abuse of office. Five months later, on July 22, he died of cancer."

[Bernard]

STEVE SMITH: It’s absolutely not going to be like it was. It never can be. What I try to emphasize is that the values that are at the core of our calling, the Fourth Estate value, the defending the defenseless value, the telling people what we know when we know it value, holding up and honoring and perpetuating those core values ought now to be our mission.

Too bad for Mr. Smith, his values do not include making a profit. Later, he says he may join the academic world. Maybe he would find his calling as a community organizer.

[Diver Dave]

ahh, The Review. One of my first employers way back when the ink smears on the paper were like Smith’s smears of present day.

I’ll not weep for Smith, instead, reflect on the work ethic instilled by my folks when they encouraged a young kid delivering papers at 5 am, rain or snow, dark or dawn’s early light.

[Jerry Attrick]

Two reasons that newspapers are going down. Arrogance and Lying.

ARROGANCE in their biased self-engrandizing “reporting” and LYING for years about circulation numbers. And they all do it. (google “newspaper circulation scandal”.)

Advertisers finally figured out that people aren’t reading papers anymore. Oooops. There went the revenue.

[Leisler]

High taxes, tax out marginal businesses. Inanimate objects do not pay taxes. Only people do. One way or another every person is a form of tax. Newspapers are people intensive. Thus their high labor cost reflect the high costs of taxes.

Too bad people intensive newspapers have pushed for high taxes for fifty years.

Why the F do they think every production line has automated? Because no matter how much a machine costs, you don’t have to pick up the human costs of land tax at their house, the car tax, booze tax, cig tax and all those things that people like, and all of which are taxed.

Boo f’ken Hoo. Karma is a bitch...

[Michael.SF.]

[RJL]

The paper collaborated with an AM radio station...

In Seattle? Air America no doubt.

[RJL]

The paper collaborated with an AM radio station...

In Seattle? Spokane, Washington? Air America no doubt.

LOL, Oop's... I plead guilty, with a nasty cold as a distraction.

[sergeantdave]

I’m somewhat familiar with the northwest media. If there were justice in America, the traitor Steve Smith should be hanged. The left wing media destroyed thousands of logging jobs and ruined entire families and communities, all to protect the stupid spotted owl.

Steve, I hope you end up living under a bridge in a small cardboard box.

[Sir_Ed]

Sting or not, he still was a closeted homosexual who was lying to his constituency.

Ed

[CreviceTool]

In the words of the late Jim West upon losing his office:

“Look, there are people who voted against me because of their whole attitude about gays, whether I’m gay or not. There are people who voted against me because they got this daily pounding, daily pounding. The radio commentator, radio talk show host said, “We’ll do anything we can to get this guy out of office.” The newspaper dredging up stories, the same story over and over and over with a different slant — that’s a pretty massive campaign. If they had to declare those as campaign contributions, they’d be probably a $300,000 or $400,000 contribution between the radio station and the TV and the newspaper.

And of course the local TV stations, because they couldn’t interview any of the newspaper sources, they basically followed the newspaper stories, so it just amplified it. You know, just here we go. It’s this rush to judgment. It’s why they burned women at the stake in Salem, Mass., in the 1600s. It’s human nature, in a way...”

I’m ambivalent about Mayor West’s alleged sexuality since there was no actual act or gay lover that surfaced to my reading of the situation.

[Sir_Ed]

I think it’s pretty clear what his sexual orientation was.

I never voted for him, I lived in North Idaho and just worked in Spokane, but I agree, he was a good mayor.

But I would have voted against him based on what he tried to set up with that teenaged boy.

Ed