Thanks to the blog Inside Out for finding this little gem (and the headline) about the future of Advance and Newhouse journalism:
Rent-A-Journalist
Just in case my old boss at the Journal was wondering: I'm not available. I don't think I'm on the editor's short list anyway (not on the long list either).
A few of us who took the buyout briefly toyed with an idea of setting up an online mid-Michigan crime blog and continuing our reporting days, but like the Journal has found out it might be fun to do, but there is very little money it.
Got to love the name of the news service that has been providing high school sports for the New Jersey paper: Dorf News Service. Really.
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3 comments:
Another similarity between the on-their-deathbeds domestic auto and newspaper industries: Outsourcing!
Maybe you could make a bit of money with the police blog.
Did you see Baltimore Police Blotter turns 30 article that included this quote:
What is suprising to me is that the while newspapers shed features once thought sacrosanct, such as stock tables, the blotter remains one of the most popular items in both print and web formats. People complain when it's not in the paper, and the words "police blotter" are among the most searched for terms on our Internet site."
and this
"Few newspapers have blotters anymore -- the New York Post still does -- and even fewer send reporters out to station houses to compile crime. Such lists typically come from headquarters, and are usually sanitized and contain only the most serious incidents, the incidents that command cares about and thinks everyone else cares about as well.
Community and neighborhood newspapers publish blotters. The one in the Baltimore Guide is very popular among residents, and I thought it was great timing when this week the New York Times wrote a brief sketch of a reporter for the Brooklyn Paper who still walks to the 94th Precinct in Greenpoint to compile a weekly blotter. The headline: "The Dying Art of the Crime Blotter."
I really believe mcw that people still buy the newspaper to get the day to day stuff that happens around them. Especially, the day-to-day police stuff.
Admittedly, I'm biased about that. Heck, I did it for 30 years and I loved nearly every minute of doing it.
I even started the "Night Beat," now "Off Beat" column so I could find a home for some of those items that were quirky enough to interest people, but not serious enough to justify a "blotter" item.
I still get comments about those columns and Bryn, the guy who took it over a number of years ago, has kept up the tradition and I know he gets a lot of comments.
The "Night Beat" and "Off Beat" column were not a creation of an editor, it came from beat reporting.
Beat reporting, I believe, could still work - even online - to ramp up interest in the newspaper again.
Thanks,
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