OK. So I’m back. I know you all missed me terribly ... Vacations are fun and all that, but other than photos and memories, what you really get are 2000 emails to go through and lots of smoldering fires to try to put out.
If you read the paper today, you know that we are making some changes. We are letting five staff members go across all departments of the newspaper and making some significant changes to our features and business sections.
Our standalone business section, which has been a prominent part of our daily report for the past 8-10 years, is going away. Business coverage will now be in the metro section, as it was when I began here as a reporter in the mid-1980s. Like many other things in journalism, there’s a financial component to it. We’re trying to control costs, and newsprint is a big one. I won’t BS anyone and say that this is an improvement, but I would like to think that a smaller newshole and less display space will force us to change some of our approach to business coverage and place more emphasis on bigger stories and less on routine pieces.
This is not the first time I’ve addressed layoffs here or changes in the paper’s coverage, but the realities of being part of a publicly held company create demands that can be difficult to work through. It’s messy and never pleasant. The newspaper of today looks different from the newspaper of 10 years ago, which in turn looks different from that of 20 years ago. They are reflective of the times in which they exist. And the newspaper of 10 years from now? It may be paper in name only. It will certainly be more focused, with more short stories, and a distribution system that I can only begin to imagine.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
Newspapers are in complete denial. They’re dying faster than I thought they would. If there weren’t so many incompetent people running them they would die slower. Why don’t you pour some resources into your online department where there is actual growth? Maybe then they wouldn’t have to serve pop-up ads to actually make money. Seriously, you people make some of the strangest decisions I’ve ever seen.
I’ll just say that it always seems to be bad news when the newspaper is the news. News organizations don’t do a good job reporting on themselves.
I have gone through cut backs, layoffs, downsizing, right sizing and outright firing people’s back sides too many times to recount. Only on one occasion, in the early 90’s, did the company I work for get it right. That time many in senior management,"high value targets”, got the ax. In other words the very people responsible for the miserable decisions that led to poor performance got what was truly deserved.
I’m willing to venture a guess that few, if any, of the five released by the WSJ were responsible for the current predicament.
Pretty sad state of affairs when Entertainment and Sports get more coverage than Business. I remember when the Journal had a great tab section on Monday for Business. It actually had content other than canned press releases, business calendars and restaurant openings. The change a few years ago was a step in the right direction, namely the elimination of the stock pages. I sincerely hope the Journal will take these efficiencies and put some real effort into business reporting.
Life is always more complicated in reality than on paper or on a screen. We actually have been putting a fair amount of money into the Web site, but you can’t just abandon the business that makes 90 percent of the profits even if you don’t like the trendlines.
I was actually the business editor when we had the Monday business section. Pretty good section. But essentially, it is our Sunday business section in a different format (We didn’t have a Sunday biz section to speak of then.) I think that one of our goals in making the difficult decisions we had to make was to sacrifice newsprint and keep journalists. The goal is that the content remains, although it may be in different places.
meanwhile, over on Esbee’s blog, folks are discussing the Journal. See http://lifeinforsyth.blogspot.com/2007/08/where-do-you-live.html
I love the printed word but am so sad about the way the Journal is going. Favorites include Sexton, Hastings, Bare etc. and all the other good columnists (Cannot remember the names, but most are excellent). The Weekend Journal thing from the Wall Street Journal that you clip in on Sundays is not useful at all to me.
And I agree with the others about how useless all the other cut-and-paste features you’ve been adding in from Wash Post/ LA Times etc. I want LOCAL news which is why I subscribe to your paper and not Greensboro News or Charlotte Observer.
Thanks.
I left much of this on Esbee’s blog but have no indication you read it there, not will I probably here, since you don’t respond much. Last year I wrote a news release - not a mere e-mail massage, a news release - and sent it to the Journal because I had published a chapbook of poems, my second. I am a poet. I found the information printed in the Journal under Milestones (with all the Boy Scout notices). Nothing against scouts, but aren’t these events differemt?
This is the City of Arts. Yet the Arts page often tells of gallery openings in New York, Charleston, or Washington. This Sunday’s Writers Notebook announced that a teen from Lexington will lead the Open Mic at the library. Nothing else. Like the rest of us aren’t doing anything. Like a follow-up on the news release isn’t a story waiting to happen. Like if someone isn’t teaching at one of the local schools, he/she isn’t really doing art.
Even the local book festival requires a writer to have a book at B&N;to be considered. Like that isn’t one big ad! Art? No, fundraising. Local news is wanting. What does your neighbor do? Does he/she like MASCAR or opera? Or both? The business section is a bore. We are the city of arts; art is our business. How?
Your announcement on your poetry collection ended up in the wrong place. Not sure why. But it did. Mistakes happen. Our arts coverage isn’t perfect, but I can assure you that we cover more arts than any newspaper our size. And our parameters for putting items in our calendar listings are very generous.
One of the issues you bring up with regards to art and artists is how do we determine whether somebody is worth covering. Is the mere fact of making art enough to be newsworthy. Sometimes yes, more often no. At some level, there has to be some third-party validation of the work in question. Not always, but generally.
Thank you, Ken. I appreciate the explanation. And of course, I see that not every artistic move is newsworthy. BTW, I called the newsroom to ask where I should send the news release, before I sent it to the Journal. I was assured that it would get to the right place. And yes, mistakes happen.
When - if - I actually publish the book of poems that I am currently shopping (seeking publication is a total non-news process), who can I notify to get real publicity: Publication does involve a third party and ought to be newsworthy.
Call our features department, 727-7339
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