Newsroom Carnage Continues at The Washington Post

[marmar]

from Truthdig:



Newsroom Carnage Continues at The Washington Post

Posted on May 16, 2008


This just in: The Washington Post is the latest major newspaper to undergo the apparently inevitable newsroom downsizing process, clearing out 100 more journalists with a “blunt instrument,” as former Post (and former New York Times) writer Sharon Waxman reports in her WaxWord blog. “The Washington Post as I know it has jumped the shark,” Waxman laments.

WaxWord:

At this rate, whither the National desk? Whither Foreign? Word is that executive editor Leonard Downie is on his way to retirement (he denied it today to Joe Strupp). The other rumor is that managing editor Phil Bennett will not be his successor. Make no mistake; we are eviscerating the heart of the institutions that act as our watchdogs to power. (While I’m at it, here’s a tip of the hat to colleagues just laid off at The New York Times: the talented Jeff Leeds, who ably covered the music beat in LA; Katie Hafner in San Francisco; Claudia Deutsch in business, and others.)

No one has clear answers to the crisis that faces newspapers today, and the impact that the diminishing of great journalism will have in a free society. But we had damn well better start figuring it out.

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20080516_newsroom_carnage_continues_at_the_washington_post/

[Richard Steele]

1. Clearly, this story is untrue. The Washington Post didn't even -HAVE- 100 journalists.

Not for many years now.

[pocoloco]

2. Oh yeah?

Hard for me to remember when we last had great journalism.
Or even good journalism.

[ColbertWatcher]

6. The Nation, Mother Jones, Harper's. n/t

[Selatius]

3. The Washington Post saw better days during the Viêt Nam war. Back then, they practiced JOURNALISM.

Today, WaPo has fallen victim to corporate capitalism, bent on profits and not on substance. Who wants to pay for a journalist who reports on bad things corporate industrialists do or the bad things the federal government does in the name of corporate power?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

4. After almost 30 years as a subscriber

to the Washington Post, I cancelled a couple of years ago. Their backing of Fuckface just got too hard for me to face first thing in the morning.

I haven't missed it. The Post of the Woodward and Bernstein days ended when Ben Bradlee and Katharine Graham retired.

[Muttocracy]

5. I wonder if the best journalists from all the paper formed their own paper,

print and online versions, if they could make it work. Maybe we can't support the # of journalists we'd like, but maybe the highest quality ones can band together?

edit for extra word I don't remember typing? time for bed!

[Lena inRI]

9. Brilliant idea, Joe. . .

. . . Generation Tech . . .from Generation X !

:think: :think: :think: :think: :think:

[SteveM]

12. Journalists have kicked this around for several years, maybe it'll happen (nt)

[goforit]

7. Well, A price to pay drowning the public with propaganda. KARMA

[Goodnevil]

8. Journalism standards have always sucked

since the days of yellow journalism...hell, since the days of Rome.

People have always sold out to someone else telling them what to say.

There are good truthsayers out there, they're just mostly on the internet.

[Old and In the Way]

10. The basic business model is dying.

The internet is killing it. Advertising, an important revenue source, is drying up. But the net delivers the news faster, in more detail, with immediate analysis and commentary. The net now has embedded video and dynamic javascript to make the information richer. Of course, corporatization of the published media is a factor that has hastened the downfall...but I think it was inevitable as computers and the internet have evolutionized our reading habits. I used to have breakfast while reading the paper...now I have breakfast while reading the laptop.

What's still to be determined is how the cost of journalism (salaries and expenses) can be absorbed by a media that is decentralized and largely free to the consumer. We need to have people doing the nuts and bolts stuff of reporting the news so we can make informed decisions. I think Talking Points Memo might be such a model where Marshall hires reporters to do original investigative reporting. I think the overhead of bricks and morter become meaningless when you have people doing original reporting on news of national importance. People don't care where you exist or how impressive the office is if you are delivering important news to their screen.

Perhaps, in the future, there will be a few dozen TPM's, surviving on ads and reader subscriptions.

Who knows? Maybe DU will pick up some of the slack and start hiring a few researcher-reporters, offering original content from professional reporters. Not dissing any of the great writers we have here now, but wouldn't it be something to see the news wires broadcast news with a (DU) or (TPM) or (HP) or (TP) or (DK) reference?

[AnnieBW]

11. Please tell me that Froomkin and Lisa DeMoraes

aren't leaving!