Nothing like reinventing yourself. There was a time that the old Booth Newspaper Group had a pretty effective Lansing bureau. Many local reporters were rotated through and cut their teeth on statewide coverage.
Then hard times hit and the same folks who are now touting the 'establishment' of a Lansing bureau disbanded and neutered it and sent many good reporters packing.
Obviously that was a mistake as shown by the realization that there was, and is, a need for such a bureau.Fortunately for those who made the mistake there seems to be little penalty for living in the rarified air of upper management levels.
That said, I know some of the folks who will be involved in the coverage and they are good.
Enjoy the comments, as long as they remain, at the bottom of Paul's column.
And just in case it gets pulled here's a brief segment from one of those comments:
"Isn't it just a little tasteless Mr. Keep seems to have this penchant for self promotion? How about just doing a great job and letting us be the judge? Does he have to judge it for us? Does Paul Keep really think he gets to judge it for me?
I don't agree with Fenster the paper is Liberal, that would be a step up, it is just more about incompetence and arrogance more than anything else. Heck, as I point out in the first comment, I emailed one of the reporters about a story they started and dropped. The reporter could have picked it up and covered it, even late. Instead, I got no answer, at all. No story. Nothing."
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5 comments:
For some reason newspapers feel a need to shamelessly promote themselves these days. I wonder if Keep really believes what he is spewing.. he's been there awhile and knows how things have gone downhill dramatically.
In my humble opinion, the endless blowing of their own horn does a disservice to the paper - if you have to hype your "improved" coverage with nonstop hyperbole it must not really be that great, right?
Here in Chicago the Trib greatly expanded their print product to almost twice its size a year ago (it's actually a good paper for 2012, although I don't care for their politics). But they still place "another page added to the Tribune" tags on top of half the pages. And every investigative piece has a "Tribune watchdog" tag on top. I suppose newspapers doing what they are supposed to do is noteworthy these days...
Say what you want about various Booth/Mlive missteps (and there is a lot to say) and all of the chest-thumping, but the comments from the troll peanut gallery never cease to amaze me. Unless these people are actually paying for news, their opinions are irrelevant.
A headline on Muskegon's Mlive site:
"Baby Kate live coverage: Surprise FBI witness expected to lead off"
How is it that something that is expected is a surprise?
Here's the story link:
http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2012/04/baby_kate_live_coverage_surpri.html
The management at the old Booth Mid-Michigan, many of whom were promoted to positions of power in MLive Media Group, really do think people are stupid. We were told that if anyone complained when staff shrunk, the paper was cut to three days and the size of those editions shrunk that we should tell people this would actually be "better." Seriously. Less is more. How Orwellian.
As a continuing subscriber to one of the papers I can attest that the paper is not "better."
I am still loyal to the idea of a newspaper and will continue to subscribe (until they cancel me like the did to others here in Lapeer County) or they no longer do home delivery.
Unless I receive a link by e-mail or on Facebook I never go to MLive. It is still a miserable website to navigate.
But it is not better.
Jim
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