Actually, if this is not a deadpool but a deathwatch, go ahead and add the Flint Journal, the Saginaw News, the Bay City Times, the Grand Rapids Press, the Muskegon Chronicle, the Kalamazoo Gazette and the Jackson Citizen-Patriot. http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/major_changes_for_mlive.html
A few things here. (1) At least with Ann Arbor, Advance seems to be willing to try an entirely new model and see if it works. They'll be printing Thursdays and Sundays, but they're not describing it as a reduction from daily to two days -- they're saying that the newspaper will cease, the website will rise up and then the website will generate a product that is twice-weekly printed. Rather than paring back a newspaper staff, they're going to start over with nothing but the newspaper's brand name (valuable) but build a staff that can be supported by a website. I think we're all going to be pretty disappointed with how small that staff will be, but it's about time someone tries to figure out exactly what it will look like. How many editors are there; are we only going to edit the major pieces now? How much of the staff will be devoted to newsgathering vs. internet nonsense (in fairness, newspapers have always had to split the payroll, because there were plenty of people working on the presses and in distribution who weren't gatherin' themselves any news). (2) Advance's websites are pretty behind-the-times, so it's good that they're going to build it from the ground up. Again, trying to work with their existing model wasn't going to work. (3) Some of the comments on this story are so dumb. People are saying the problem is a lack of commitment to investigative reporting. Do they really think television stations are going to do this? They don't understand what's happening here. Like the newspapers *want* to be scaling back to like 12 pages a day. People are so very, very, very stupid. Sorry to be so negative, but... it's one thing if this all goes down because that's just how supply and demand works... it's another thing if people think that journalism is doing this to itself. Newspapers are the past, but journalism ought to be eternal, in any kind of democracy I'd want to live in. ====== AIM/Gmail Chat: damonbeau :: :: Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Science without humanity. Knowledge without character. Politics without principle. Commerce without morality. Worship without sacrifice. --Gandhi's seven deadly social sins :: :: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." --King :: :: "Any time you have the opportunity to accomplish something and you don't, you are wasting your time on this earth." --Roberto Clemente On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 11:21, danny burstein <[email protected]> wrote: > > The Ann Arbor News will close in July and will be replaced by a Web-based, > media company called AnnArbor.com, Laurel Champion, publisher of The News, > announced in a 9 a.m. meeting with staff. > > "While this is an incredibly difficult decision for us, this is by no > means the end of local journalism in Ann Arbor," Champion said. > > rest: > > http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2009/03/ann_arbor_news_to_close_in_jul.html > > > _____________________________________________________ > Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key > [email protected] > [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "World News Now Discussion List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/wnndl?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
