Adweek reports that ten of the paper's top staffers met with president and general manager Steve Hills over sandwiches to chat "about the challenges that we facegone are the days of steak and lobster...
Posted on 05/08/2012 8:57:43 AM PDT by abb
Late last week the hallowed Washington Post announced a first-quarter operating loss of $22.6 million as print ads sank 17 percent year-over-year and online revenue dipped 7 percent, too. Weekday circulation is now under 500,000, falling almost 10 percent, while the company's onetime moneymaker, the education unit Kaplan, lost some millions as well. Journalists at the paper are well aware of the problems and last month had a dark-sounding "secret meeting" to talk things out.
Adweek reports that ten of the paper's top staffers met with president and general manager Steve Hills over sandwiches to chat "about the challenges that we face," in Hills's words. The paper picked up no Pulitzers this year, and so "Hills was said to have shocked with remarks that awards 'don't matter,' urged more traffic-driving slideshows over original Post photos, and compared the Post to Ohio's Dayton Daily News, a paper with one-fifth the circulation." Welcome to 2012.
Not present at the meeting was executive editor Marcus Brauchli, who assured Adweek that the Post is still after "original, ambitious, high-impact journalism," while the investigations division editor Jeff Leen said, "We're still doing very ambitious, expensive, risky work." Key word: expensive.
Adweek reports that ten of the paper's top staffers met with president and general manager Steve Hills over sandwiches to chat "about the challenges that we facegone are the days of steak and lobster...
Not necessarily.
MooseChelle may have hit the buffet line before they stopped for lunch.
yup, ya never know anymore...
Is that John Travolta?
You're right. When I see the 'Union' label, I put the product down.
That would be the hollowed out Washington Post - so what's happening? Or not happening? It's not one thing it's...
It's not just bias, that's too simple. It's not just giving the finger to the half of Americans who are conservative - that alone wouldn't destroy a large newspaper.
It's not just the total lack of diversity of ideas. It's not even the silliness of diversity based on pigmentation and sexual organ choices... It's not the short sighted laying off of working journalists and downsizing of needed staff.
It's not even the vanity of editors wanting to cover larger and larger areas - not to help their advertisers or provide a better product, but just to push personal ego trips to 'strut on the stage' to BE the blowhard.
It's not even the slippery destruction of old school ethics - where journalists never SOLD themselves to the highest bidder - or "mixed" with those they covered.. Nope... it's not even...
Gads there's just too much stuff - I'd be here all night... Anyhow the connections to the community are compromised by short term, biased, elitist thinking and it's dreadful. I read my local paper until I've been slapped in the face a few times, insulted, and lied to once or twice... then I turn to the comics, read 'Pearls before Swine' and decide I'll wait another day to cancel my subscription...that day is coming...
I'm not alone in my thinking.
In the founding era, most newspapers were weeklies. There were some which didn’t have a deadline at all, and just went to press when the printer was good and ready!The Associated Press changed that by producing/distributing a continuous stream of news from around the country and the world. Thus, the newspapers stopped being about the opinions of their printers and became about so-called “hard news.”
Around here, we have reasonably good quality, entertaining, informative local papers, tabloid format, which are distributed FREE and make ALL their revenue off advertising.
So what's so hard about the newspaper bidness?
Keyword: BS. What he means is they support worthless but grandiose narcissistic prima donnas on outrageous expense accounts to generate supermarket tabloid-level features.
And they laughed at the Bushes being members of Skull & Bones.
You are SOOOOOOOOOOOO sued !
Go read Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave. Written from the 1980 perspective (the year it was published), one chapter from that book, "De-Massifying the Media," has become one of the most prophetic things I've ever read. Thanks especially to the modern public Internet, we're getting the news faster than even the wire services! And with modern "smart" cellphones, people can post videos (with sound!) on YouTube, Vimeo, and other video sites very quickly. In short, it's the most dramatic change in communications since Gutenberg invented the hot-metal movable-type printing press in the 1450's.
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