Posted on 02/26/2009 7:58:18 AM PST by SmithL
A couple of years ago, when speaking to a local group, I mentioned that The Chronicle was losing money. A couple in the back of the room rudely applauded. How thrilled those two must have felt when - if - they learned of Chronicle Publisher Frank Vega's announcement Tuesday that the Hearst Corp. will implement "significant" workforce cuts. If the cuts don't pay off, then the Hearst Corp. will "offer the newspaper for sale or close it altogether."
Bloggers and e-mailers are crowing. If The Chronicle is shuttered, they'll be dancing a jig.
Many conservatives feel a warm glow at the possible demise of an institution that they believe to be failing because of liberal bias. On the far left, that same glow will satisfy those who think newspapers are not liberal enough.
As for those who only read their news online, here's a news flash: News stories do not sprout up like Jack's bean stalk on the Internet. To produce news, you need professionals who understand the standards needed to research, report and write on what happened. If newspapers die, reliable information dries up.
Reduced ad revenue and falling newspaper circulation mean that there will be fewer people to cover the same number of stories. In the middle of an economic crisis and President Obama's federal spending bonanza, there will be fewer watchdogs to guard the shop.
So to those of you who argue that the demise of liberal newspapers (The Chronicle in particular) is deserved, I offer a caveat: Be careful what you wish for.
Remember the ugly consequences of San Francisco's sanctuary city policy for juvenile offenders, who were sent abroad instead of to jail? Or Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums' failure to tackle crime in Oaktown? Or reports on corporate bonuses for execs at bailed-out banks? Imagine....
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Printed newspapers have several built in flaws that they refuse to correct. Outdated pricing models, non-functional integration of the online presence to compliment the printed one, dependence on outside agencies to handle normal course of business billing, and editorial control that is non-existent.
If you force your advertisers to go to monster.com, to list rentals on Craig’s List. If you force small business to advertise in throw-a-way weeklies because it’s too much bother to make standards for easy insertions, and you continue to operate in an elitist manner so that any new customer must navigate advertising reps rather than making it so that new advertisers can price out, submit ad copy, and choose insertion online - you’re doomed to failure.
The further elitist concept that only printed media can generate a story is the typical insanity that permeates the newspaper culture, flying in total ignorance of online media presence, as well as their neighbors in radio and television journalism.
And let’s be honest, well over half the national stories produced these days are nearly verbatim copy that’s sent out by political offices, I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten a press release from John Kerry’s office and seen the nearly identical article the next day in the Chronicle.
Is there advertising money out there? Absolutely - but advertisers are increasingly being turned away from the very newspapers that are dying to have their business and instead turning to alternative outlets. Pick up an independent weekly free newspaper, and generally marvel about the large variety of local advertisers who are paying good money to get their message out.
In the early 1990’s, I watched our local newspaper go from a ninety percent local / ten percent national advertising rate to a 75 percent national, 25 percent local, with pretty much only big box retailers or auto dealerships making up local ad copy. Dealing with small business was seen as a ‘chore’, and they systematically shut down accounting departments that maintained the business relationship with advertisers, outsourcing it to third party collectors, and worse, selling those assets (and killing their customer base) for pennies on the dollar.
It’s time the printed media get their heads out of their rumps and actually recall that they operate a business. If you don’t got customers coming through your doors, either you’re offering the wrong product, it’s priced wrongly, or you’re doing something to really piss off your customers. Instead, it has been a steady decline of whining and unchanging business practices that really exemplifies the tag given to them... dinosaur media.
I’ve sort of followed her progression from the early days when she was a sometimes columnist/writer in The Daily Green Sheet for San Fernando; A phrase she attributed to her father still sticks on my mind. “A hundred years, all new people...”
Even though she may have adopted that homespun philosophy, she has developed as a writer and progressed up the food chain even while swimming among sharks and pirhanas; the Chronicle has a proud history and a long one, as newspapers go, I hope she doesn’t turn into another Kathleen Parker just to butter her own bread.
There are professionals and there are experts. One group is paid. The other knows what it’s doing. There IS some overlap.
And among the above—is still the further issue of integrity. There are some in each group. I’m hoping....
Exactly.
The ultra left commie pervert rag Chron long ago abandoned it's Fourth Estate charge.
The Chron only revealed socialist evil triumphs AFTER the damage was done, the political agenda criminals were safe, the policy was set in the concrete of activist judges law, and the results final.
ONLY THEN would the Chron try to sell papers with the "expose".
The people in this organization have EARNED unemployment, including Saunders. They are traitors that cover up evil until it is too late and then expect accolades and reward for telling us how we were screwed.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2194529/posts
A Vote of No-Confidence for ‘Old News Media’
Nobody likes to see their ox getting gored, only this ox is missing its right legs and has AIDS and mad cow disease. Let it go.
There are standards. It’s too bad that newspapers across the country have failed to follow those standards and turned off consumers. People do want news. But they want it to be unbiased and accurate.
It is a tragedy that journalists are as corrupt as politicians. Our corrupt leaders should take note. Next up for foreclosure: Government!
“Remember the ugly consequences of San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy for juvenile offenders, who were sent abroad instead of to jail? Or Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums’ failure to tackle crime in Oaktown? Or reports on corporate bonuses for execs at bailed-out banks? Imagine....”
I don’t see the connection. Those were stories representing “good” reporting that would have come out with or without the Chron. OK, 2% of their work is good. The Chron is truly one of the most sub-useless newspapers I’ve ever read. Few would miss it other than those employed there.
I often forget this aspect of it but you are correct. I've had several experiences in this vein including the apparent refusal of ad reps to return a phone call or e-mail.
There are many sales jobs that should do away with commissions altogether but their employers are too cheap and lazy to even take up the subject.
Debra oughta read the letter to the editor in this morning's Comical where her own self-serving diatribe appears, It comes from the Ambassador of Poland. Excerpt and a link (2nd letter down):
It is with regret that I draw your attention to Aaron Heller's article in The Chronicle titled "Murals from Nazi Poland see the light" (Feb. 23). The title's reference to "Nazi Poland" is a shocking distortion of historical fact. This is not merely a semantic matter. Link.
I think about now is a good time to put up this link.
http://www.libertyroundtable.org/library/essay.drudge.html
Anyone With A Modem Can Report On The World
Address Before the National Press Club
by Matt Drudge, June 2, 1998
Ping
Nailed it!
Good analogy.
Saunders is extremely conservative compared to the rest of SF.
As a former Journalism major, I went to school with many of these people.
Television and newspaper newsrooms are dominated by people who don’t have a clue about the real world. They’re liberals. The perceived and real power they have to shape public opinion is intoxicating.
Money grows on trees. They think they get paid to push their agendas. “Sales” is a dirty word and beneath them. They show contempt for the salespeople at their organizations. None of them have a stake in the business operations of the newspaper. Like our politicians, most of them have never had real jobs.
If they get laid off, it’s the fault of the stupid businesspeople who aren’t running ads. It’s “Bush’s Fault” for bringing on the recession. They think they can endlessly bash any business in their “news” articles, yet that business is somehow required to advertise.
The would welcome government subsidies of their jobs.
Most of them are idiots. The biggest of these idiots go to work for the national networks, magazines, press services and newspapers.
“Journalists” and politicians have much in common.
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