Friday, May 4, 2012
AP apologizes to reporter - 50 years after he died
The Associated Press apologized to a reporter it fired in 1945, but it came a little late.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Some posts from around MLive Media Group land
A few notes on MLive Media Group that have come my way in
recent weeks.
Talk about good luck, the Victorian home near the Michigan
Capitol housing the ‘new’ Lansing offices of MLive Media Group was supposed to
be sold when the old Lansing bureau was eviscerated a couple years ago. The
housing slump resulted in the house not being sold and for some time only one
person was working out of that office.
The company, of course, continued to pay the heat, electric
bills for the large house that was really home to just one person. Now with the
new bureau occupants the office space may now justify its expense. Sometimes it
pays not to sell.
Also in MMG news:
A former GR Press blogger whose 21st century job
at the new MMG was to scan for topics pricking the computer keys of readers and
then turning those into “hits” on the website has apparently decided the grass
is greener at the Detroit Free Press. The blogger was a longtime Grand Rapids
Press employee and was part of the new team that was to help transition the
news group from dead tree to Internet.
Don’t know if that is a good or bad sign for the new venture
that folks are already leaving.
Reportedly, six advertising folks in Grand Rapids have been
parted from the company since the restructuring in February. That’s two a
month, if my math is good. I’m told that three or four of those were new hires
and others were legacy employees, which is what they call folks who made the
transition from the newspaper to the new group. Some were long time employees.
It seems to be another dubious sign of a difficult
transition for the new company. Wonder what the costs are to hire and fire that
many employees in so short a time?
Then there was the comment when the old managers in
discussing the new company said: “You’ll be happy to know we’re streamlining management” as they canned a number of middle
managers in the restructuring. Well, I’m told they have added a couple more
management levels. Maybe it took more time for self-promotion and the promotion
of the new company then they first realized.
There’s also some word that a couple folks, one or perhaps
two from the centralized copy desk, are currently on medical leave due to
stress. More veteran copy folks, people who were asked to stay on during the
transition, have been let go which has put more pressure on those who remain.
Some folks are being pushed to do 20 or more pages for the
dead tree editions in one night. The attitude is one of “just get it done”
without too much concern about what is going into the print product.
From more than one source I’ve been told that the new
attitude is that the newspaper product is no longer the central focus. In fact,
managers have been told not to “think newspaper” anymore. What is being
manufactured into the print product is just whatever the centralized copy desk
finds that has already been published on the website.
From my personal observation the delivered papers are very
thin and if I go back I can find that all the stories were published online the
week before they appeared in my home delivered version.
When the readers eventually discover how little attention is
being paid to the product that they actually have to pay for, and the one that
is bringing in the lion’s share of the revenue it may leave a bad taste.
The numbers for home delivery, at least on a couple routes
that have been reported to me continue to fall in numbers.
To be fair, on the rare occasion that I visit MLive.com I do
find things that are worthwhile to read and I do check in for sports, but at
home I can read the delivered paper in about 10 minutes. If I wasn’t a former
employee and feel a sense of loyalty to the folks still working there I would be
inclined to cancel.
Actually, we’ve tried to do several vacation stops in the
past few months while we traveled only to come home to piles of newspapers in
and around our Journal box. Whatever system they are using for calling in
vacation stops, it’s not working. My wife says on one occasion she talked to a
human and the other times it told her to leave a message and that they would
call back, which they never did.
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