Bankruptcies, Cutbacks, and Sensitivity
There was a round of bad news about local media this week. The Dallas Business Journal reported that newspaper publisher American Community Newspapers LLC filed for bankruptcy. ACN publishes the Plano Star Courier, McKinney Courier-Gazette and numerous other DFW suburban newspapers. So much for the theory that the future of newspapers is by going local. It's tough all over out there.
The second bit of bad news comes from Rod Dreher in his Crunchy Con blog on beliefnet. He reports the "very depressing news" (for Dreher, that could mean anything, as he's a depressing kind of guy) that the "last two religion reporters [at The Dallas Morning News] have been reassigned to covering suburban schools." Maybe the DMN hasn't heard the news yet that there's no shelter from the media storm in the suburbs.
What's my pet peeve? It's getting news about The Dallas Morning News from third parties. If the DMN can't even cover itself, why should we trust that it can cover anything else, whether religion or suburban schools? Worse in this case, the news comes from one of the News' own employees blogging on another Web site. I've never understood what kind of contract Rod Dreher has with the DMN that lets him publish on other sites. Why wouldn't the DMN encourage him to blog all he wants, but insist that it be published on the News' own religion blog?
A sign of how all the bad news is wearing down people in the media business can be seen in the reaction to yesterday's blog about Richardson City Council candidate Thomas Bache-Wiig's intemperate response to the Richardson Coalition PAC's voter's guide. The guide mentioned Bache-Wiig's "fourteen jobs in the last twenty eight years." The mailer doesn't mention it, but apparently many of those jobs were in the media business. Bache-Wiig sees the mailer's numeric tally as the equivalent of calling him "a shiftless drifter." Reader "amanda" sees it as an "attack" and relates how she knows of "at least 40 professionals in the last year who have been RIFFED, fired, non-renewed, etc." It appears to me that all the bad news in the media business is making at least some people a bit touchy, reading into even simple factual statements all sorts of implied judgment. When it bleeds over into politics, it can get messy and nasty real quick.
4 comments:
When you sell something noone wants, what do you expect to happen?
I think the demand is as great as ever, but there's an overabundance of supply at virtually no cost, so it's hard to make a buck.
I disagree. I think papers are a dead end for a number of reasons (these are my opinions).
1) Their core customer is dying off. The only people I know who have subscriptions to papers are 60+ years old.
2) Quality of news stories in general is dropping.
As for the many jobs in so many years, I can relate to that. I am a embedded software engineer. In the 10 years I have been out of school (graduated 1998), I've changed jobs 7 times. With no context, you'd think I must be a deadbeat.
One job went away when the company closed following the capital drought following 9-11. The rest have been moves to acquire new skills or escape oppressive work environments. So without context, it's hard to judge someones work history.
The days of an individual working for 1-2 companies is dead. Employees are not rewarded for such loyalty anymore. In fact, you hurt yourself because companies raises never match the going rate (at least in my industry). Mercenary? Yes it is, but you have to look out for yourself. No one else will.
I meant that the demand for news was as great as ever, not the demand for newspapers. Printed newspapers are dying. As for one's resume, I agree that context is everything.
Post a Comment