Saturday, June 29, 2013

We've come a long way baby (in newspapers)

Well, at least this proves that some newspapers were thinking about the impacts of the computer and Internet about the time Al Gore invented it. This 1981 news report about the Internet and newspapers is a fun listen.

It shows that some newspaper execs could see there would be an impact, but even in these early days they discounted what it might mean.

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Oregonian employees join the march to the door

The Advance newsroom strategy has moved to Portland. Welcome to the brave new world. It's a long, but familiar read. Some of the links are worth following as well.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

MLive.com on MLive.com: "We're doing great"

A self-serving, self assessment was posted by MLive.com. While I wish them well, if the comments are any indication they may want to do a story on what the readers think.

Hopefully when the boss visited the various MLive offices he brought with him a living wage and bonuses for those "professionals" who are toiling in the vineyard.

As the comments have mounted as the day goes on I'm struck that sometime since I posted this today and now a pretty significant statement has been edited out of the article. A commenter pointed out:


"below about 30 comments there is a statement that mlive has more "aggregate" journalists than were employed by the 8 papers 16 months ago. this is highly misleading in that most of the local cutbacks occurred more than 60 months ago.
that being said, as one of the former employees, i have no grievance with mlive. it just seems that the current execs maybe could just own up and say, "the economy and changing market conditions forced us to cut back," rather than trying to assert that today's product is superior. most remaining readers would appreciate the frankness and the reasons.
p.s.: when i make nostalgic visits to my old reporting clippings, which were compiled monthly in the newspaper library, i admit a number of them are too long and wordy, instead of criticizing today's citizens for having short attention spans. lol on that. !!! "

(Note from me: I thought that statement seemed suspicious when I read it, but I took it at face value, but the above commenter pointed out the obvious and now that statement seems to be missing from the article).

The comments have continued through the day and are 99 percent negative.