My Thursday Flint Journal arrived with three sections, two were extremely thin. Many of the stories in the front section appeared "borrowed" from the weekly papers (although they were good stories).
The Friday paper arrived and was pretty full of inserts (many advertising 4 a.m. Friday events that were long over by the time I got my paper) but again light on space. It appears the weekend reporters have been swamped with fatal accidents and other breaking news.
Ron Fonger did a good story on the local effects of the GM down turn earlier this week and since I complained about a lack of such coverage, just wanted to acknowledge that it had finally happened. But the business section is still largely wire and borrowed Booth features as I believe there is only one reporter assigned to business news now at the Journal (down from 4 and 5 in former years).
There has been other news on the newspaper front and I have teased with the story's lead and linked to the story here:
"Newspaper advertising sales dived by a record 18.1% in the third quarter in a historic, across-the-board rout paced by a nearly 31% plunge in classified revenues."
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/11/news-sales-fell-almost-2b-in-one.html#comments
2 comments:
What??? The Thursday sale inserts were put in Friday's paper? Isn't it bad enough that you can't find news in The Journal, now they can't manage to include the ads, either?
Hopefully, Santa will bring The Journal one or two competent managers before it's too late.
A friend of mine who writes for the Flint Journal said she's received a buyout offer and she is pondering it. (If I gave her name, I have no doubt you'd know who she was--absolute class act of a lady).
Buyouts aren't just a Michigan thing--back home in Texas, where I grew up, some are also doing it. The San Antonio Express-News is also doing that.
I wonder if it's the photographers who are getting offered buyouts. Some of the best photojournalism I've ever seen has been on the pages of the Express-News...
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