Thursday, March 21, 2013

A young former journalist skillfully sums up the biz

Well, I was waiting for a nod from the writer before posting this, but others are already sending me links to this and Inky has already commented with the link so if you want a concise wrap up of what is happening to journalism today read this young woman's blog post. The comments are good too.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, MLive is hiring:

http://www.creativejobscentral.com/editorial-jobs/asimply/flint/experienced-city-reporter-1742807.html

Stop your blog and drop your grog, the time is nigh to apply.

David Forsmark said...

"I don’t think the Internet killed newspapers. Newspapers killed newspapers."

And if the Flint Journal under Keep and Deering is any indication, they cut costs by cutting local content-- the only unique thing that made them worth subscribing to-- in favor of "free" content that people could get on their own anyway-- and was old by the time they put it out.

Anonymous said...

Jim, this isn't related to this post, but I am hoping you will share this with your readers for a "temperature" check.

At CMU in Mt. Pleasant, there is an ongoing search for a student media director. This person supervises, among other things, the campus newspaper, Central Michigan LIFE. One of the three remaining applicants (ex-Boothie named Jim Knight) is married to the new associate VP of communications. So essentially, the guy who wants to ultimately guide and control the content of the campus paper (3X/week) is married to the lady whose job security depends on a positive university image.

Of course, I think this is fraught with real and perceived conflict of interest issues. I am not questioning either person's ethical chops one bit, but I do think it puts a credibility cloud over the paper. The paper has editorialized on this (www.cm-life.com) and many former LIFE staffers have commented. You have a lot of Booth and CMU readers, so I'd love to know their thoughts. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

this is what happens when you have a vocal music major running a newspaper. http://www.mlive.com/opinion/saginaw/index.ssf/2013/04/mlive_seeking_a_different_way.html

the bay city times is dead. long live the bay city tattler.

rob clark
https://www.facebook.com/rob.clark.9028/about

Anonymous said...

What does a TV reporter have to do these days to get fired? I recently asked this question here about CNN weatherman Chad Myers,a former Detroit station weatherman. Now comes John King, one time CNN golden boy turned regular f***-up. His most glaring snafu came during the Boston Marathon bombing story when he falsely reported an arrest had been made of a "dark-skinned" suspect. In fact, there was no such arrest, no matter the skin color. Then there is King's incredibly bad misread of a routine White House press release. King actually misreported that Obama had resigned. Here is a link to a video of Jon Stewart skewering King over the arrest mistake (Stewart typically reserves such rants for conservative types), and a link to a story about the King-Obama embarrassment.

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/entertainment/television/Daily-Show-pillories-CNNs-Boston-exclusive.html

http://obnoxioustv.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/cnns-john-king-reported-president-barack-obama-resigned/

So my question stands: What does a TV reporter have to do these days to get fired? IF these two back-to-back incidents aren't enough, what is? The common thread between the Myers-King inicdents is that both were treading water reporting outside of their specialites. Myers, of course, is a weatherman, and he recently misreported Stock Exchange flooding, based on a bulletin board report, during Sandy. King, a heavily biased leftwing political reporter, tried to butch-up and play police reporter with breathtakingly miserable results.

What makes these errors even more serious is that CNN tends to play down apologies, if apologizing at all, and instead spends hours of on-air time trying to downplay and explain away the gaffes. CNN is great about holding rightwingers accountable, but their own mistakes? No so much. Keep it up, CNN, and you'll go the way of the Flint Journal. Yikes!

Anonymous said...

Lol - "what happens when a vocal music major is running a newspaper." Truer words have never been spoken, and my first thought, after reading that slop was, "Who edits this stuff." Then it came to me: A "universal" desk in Grand Rapids, designed to be cost-efficient and decidedly trendy (the appearance of being "snarky" is the lifeblood of M-Live), but in reality has led to a butt-clenchingly embarrassing amount of errors since it was instituted several years ago by an editor who - I'm pretty sure - was a business major in high school. Or some such Rotarian nonsense.

Oh, journalism is dead, dead, dead in these here parts - no matter how many "analytics" and other useless measurements are used. And here's a number - this is probably the 10th time I've been on this blog this year, which is 9 more than I've been on MLive in the past 10 years. The recent offering from Vocal Music Major is the only time; I have no plans of going back for seconds.