14th
One recovering journalist to another
M,
It looks like my old paper is finally offering buyouts with layoffs to come. There is a small item buried on its Web site today. I wonder how things are going at your old spot. It looks like we got out just in time.
It makes me sad to see the newspaper industry foundering.
The sad part is that everyone loses when there are fewer beat reporters monitoring officials, parsing public documents, tracking trends. Bloggers and Web magazines created huge competition for advertising dollars. But bloggers aren’t reporters. Bloggers post links to newspaper articles or offer up commentary about what the news means, which is cool. I enjoy reading that kind of stuff. But bloggers can’t replace journalists who have the time, resources and training to build sources, understand context, suss out latent issues.
All that being said, I personally don’t miss hounding officials and sitting through city council meetings. I just want newspapers to come up with innovative new financing strategies so that other journalists can.
Ro
