Sent to you by Sean McBride via Google Reader: Zell is not your
problem. You are. via RB | Climbing on 9/17/08 Jeff Jarvis via
BuzzMachine shared by 4 people


A bunch of current and former reporters at the LA Times are suing the
new boss, Sam Zell, “accusing him of recklessness in the takeover and
management of the newspaper’s parent, the Tribune Company,” says the NY
Times.

Journalists are such a whiny bunch, always complaining, constantly
blaming someone else for their problems. But friends, as the Rev.
Wright would say, the chickens are coming home to roost.

Newspapers and newspaper companies are about to die. The last remaining
puddles of auto, home, job, and retail advertising are about to be
sucked down the drain thanks to the economic crisis and credit is about
to be crunched into dust. So any newspaper or news company that has
been teetering will fall. If Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers,
and AIG can fall, so can a puny newspaper empire — and there’ll be no
taxpayer bailout for them. When this happens, will it be Sam Zell’s
fault? Hardly.

The Times veterans should not be suing Zell. They should be suing
themselves. Oh, I, too, am angry at the state of newspapers in America
but I’m angry at the right people. The LA Times’ problems — like those
of other papers — were caused by by decades of egotistical and
willfully ignorant neglect by the owners, managers — and staff — at the
paper.

When more than one editorial regime had the hubris to think that they
should turn the Times into a national - even international - paper,
opening bureaus all over the globe and insisting on writing every
commodity news stories under their own bylines while letting local
coverage suffer, did you protest, litigators? No, those bylines and
bureaus were yours.

When the paper was the most overwritten, under-edited consumer of
wasted ink and paper in the United States of America, boring its
audience with jump after jump of self-indulgent text and forcing
readers to flee for TV, did you get out your pencils and start trimming
and tightening? No.

When the paper failed even at covering its own hometown industry, did
you jump in to fill the void? No.

When the internet came, did you all - every one of you as responsible,
smart journalists, on your own - leap to get training in audio and
video? Did you immediately hatch new ways to work collaboratively with
the vast public of bloggers able and willing to join in local
journalism? Not that I saw.

When the link economy emerged, enabling papers to find new efficiencies
by saving resources long spent on commodity news so they could
concentrate on their real mission — local — did you grab the
opportunity by the horns and beg to cover the hell out of Encino? No.

When the Chandlers and the erstwhile Tribune management did not invest
sufficiently in building new products online and driving audience,
advertisers, and resources to it and to the future, did you protest?
Did you sue? No.

You bear your share of responsibility for the paper’s past and thus its
present. Whether Sam Zell is the guy to get the paper to the future, I
have no idea. But I can look at your stewardship and see the results.

Want to see who’s to blame for the state of your paper? Get a mirror.



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