Monday, March 14, 2011

Ann Arbor Chronicle on the AnnArbor.com layoffs

The publisher of the Ann Arbor Chronicle does an excellent job of wrapping up the current and past history of the Ann Arbor News/AnnArbor.com situation.
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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

One must wonder how many newspapers Mr. Dearing will be allowed to lead into the muck and mire of inexistence before Newhouse recognizes his failed leadership skills.

14 March, 2011 22:01
inky said...

But ... AnnArbor.com is live-blogging from a St. Paddy's Day party today. I guess that's that kind of journalism the laid-off folks didn't embrace.

17 March, 2011 15:44
Anonymous said...

Ya, Anonymous 22:01, I first ran into Dearing in college. Even then, he had positioned himself as a journalistic Apollo, only giving we mortals enough time of day to suck his god-like kneecaps. However, his record has never matched the self-promotional machine. He has never worked at a bigtime newspaper, to my knowledge, though you'd think he was editor of the NT Times or at least the Toledo Blade by his attitude. I think we all know his days are numbered at AA.com. I don't wish anyone out of a job who didn't wish me out of one first, but his superior demeanor and inferior record and results do have a way of not exactly en-Dearing him to me. Obviously, I'm not alone.

17 March, 2011 15:49
Anonymous said...

I suppose, given Dearing's smugness and mangement positions he's held throughout his career, he's fair game. Aside from some of the negative perceptions of him here and elsewhere, can someone tell the group what the official line on Dearing is? Regardless of what we may think of him, he's been able to impress CMU journalism professors and small to mid-size newspaper upper management for years. Why? Is it just his personal charms and ability to hype himself or at least impress the right peeps? Does he supposedly possess superior editor skills? Is he known as a newspaper turn-around expert or maybe a New Media-Internet guru (he seems a little long in the tooth for that; I mean, when he went to college the Internet was but a gleam in Al Gore's eye and Facebook was a book of inmate mugshots at the Mt. Pleasant City Jail). I don't see anything in the record that shows what he's done to improve a newspaper, be it at the FJ or AA.com. Also, can the guy write or is he too great an editor of others' words to bother with his own writing?

18 March, 2011 12:39
Anonymous said...

I'll vouch for this. He can't write, he can't edit and he can't manage. He knows nothing about the Web and his people skills are absolutely atrocious.

19 March, 2011 09:39
Anonymous said...

I see an adjunct instructor position at Mt. Pleasant community College in Mr. Dearing's future. Hey, check out Tony on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/tony.dearing1 and get a load of his online AA.com slideshow presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/tonydearing/la2-m.
I especially love slide 9. It says, "How We'll Cover the News: Our own staff of trained, professional journalists and Staffing plan for news: 30 to 35 employees." Cha, right! I really love this line: "Do what we do best: link to the rest." Mr. Dearing discovers hyperlinks! Egads, he was blinded by science!

19 March, 2011 20:54
inky said...

The CMU types sucked up to Dearing because he was in a position to give out intern spots. He also has personal relationships with a couple of the folks up there whom he knows from his days as a student and as editor of the campus paper.

20 March, 2011 13:38

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