Thursday, February 2, 2012

A time lapse video of people walking and sitting in a newsroom

The Grand Rapids Press put up some photos of its first day, which included a time lapse video that shows reporters and, I assume advertising folks, sitting at desks, standing up, walking around and otherwise working.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

As for the time-lapse, yawn. Looks like a Flint airport terminal on a Monday evening or inmates shuffling to and from the prison chow line. OK, the idea of a time-lapse video on day one is cool. But, sorry, it doesn't really show anything and certainly is in no way exciting or motivating. It just shows what we already know to be the case: maybe a half dozen reporters blogging or reporting but apparently for very little money. Yawn. I'll take the old newsroom for excitement any day. I know those days are gone but for the grainy time lapse in my head. Cut. Print.

02 February, 2012 23:39
Anonymous said...

What's an "Entertainment Concierge" (as mentioned in a caption)? Is that like "editor" but with a French accent? And it looks like the new term for newsroom is "hub."

03 February, 2012 14:55
Anonymous said...

Watching the video and photos, I kept thinking, "How corporate," and I'll give you one guess what kind of news comes out of such a setting: corporate.

I've worked at four daily newspapers, including the Journal, and three of those buildings were old and crumbling, with soiled carpets, leaky pipes and presses that shook the foundation. But it gave the job a sense of old-time journalism, when shoe leather was more important to getting a story than a sparkling office with unstained, ergonomic chairs and cappuccino machines.

Nothing wrong with having a new office, but it's still just a building. You don't get stories by sitting around on cushy chairs, gabbing with the "entertainment concierge."

Unless the intent is not to "get stories" in the first place, but merely to "connect with the community" and be "down on street level," whatever that's supposed to mean in MLive corporate-speak.

I'm grateful for my old friends who were rehired in Flint, and I'm sorry for those who weren't. But this whole thing has a feeling of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Maybe if the Journal hung a massive chandelier in the lobby that would complete the Titanic analogy. Glug, glug.

04 February, 2012 17:48
Anonymous said...

Wonder where they keep the backpacks?

06 February, 2012 19:29

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