Saturday, January 21, 2012

New FJ offices nearly open

Thanks to an FFE reader (my news viewing is sporadic while I am here in Texas) I received a link to a story about the new Flint Journal offices written by Cathy Shafran, a former Channel 12 reporter who seems to have a full time reporter's byline at the Journal.

If Cathy is working there it is a great hire for the paper as she is a real working journalist who did some great hard hitting reporting while she was with Channel 12.

Recently she has published a blog with breaking city news in it. She will fit in well with the new model.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

The news lending library is wide open

A loyal FFE reader spotted what the new MLive Media Group will probably be like as a Flint Journal reporter simply linked to a competitor's sports story instead of doing the appropriate leg work.

Back in the day this would have been unthinkable, but today is apparently completely appropriate. On the one hand the reporter did the ethical thing by crediting the work to his competitor, but this would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

To be clear this is not a rap on the reporter as this is what the business has become in just a very short time. I'm sure there is little time to do original reporting when it is just as easy to link to someone else's work.