Journalist layoffs: Can I enjoy the 'toe the line' writers getting whacked?

[upi402]

I stopped reading the newspapers when I started to yack on all the syrup, pap, and distraction. The papers stopped giving the labor side of any issue. Only the Wall Street Journal would at least state the position of labor.
It was so frustrating reading Milton Friedman quotes and pro NAFTA pundits given many inches and all we got as balance was a man-in-the-street comment!
I was predicting that all the wanna-be corporate whores would be next to the likes of ME in the unemployment line. And the likes of ME will eat their lunch.

Shodenfreuda; the new guilty pleasure... and it's FREE!

On the flip side, all those who stood and faced this shit storm without blinking are my heroes, true patriots of the fourth estate.

[jobycom]

1. Those are the ones that they will keep. The few who tried to report the truth will be whacked.

You don't think the corporate media owners will fire their best advertisers, do ya?

[upi402]

3. I thought they canned those in the 90's n/t

[ogneopasno]

2. A dozen of my journalist friends have been laid off in the last six months, including two today. The

newspaper is poorer for that. What makes me angry is that people picture every journalist -- from the talking heads on TV to the hardworking reporters at their hometown rag -- as some Fox mouthpiece, when the vast majority are overworked underpaid people just trying to get it right.

Oh, and it's spelled Schadenfreude. I'm an out-of-work copy editor, m'self.

[stillcool]

4. I notice that too...

people read an article on-line, and ask if the content will be 'reported by the MSM", when they just read it. Then there are lots of times you can tell people haven't read past the headline. I guess television is the only "media" that matters.

[ogneopasno]

5. Yep. Drives me right up the wall.

And I appreciate what bloggers can do, but there will always be a place for old-fashioned newsgathering. We mock its passing at our peril.

[stillcool]

12. I hope we won't be in the dark...

too long. I wonder if people would pay for an independent journalist site? I wonder if I would.

[ogneopasno]

13. There are a few models (St. Petersburg Times' publishing company is owned by a nonprofit j-school),

but somehow you gotta pay for that content. MinnPost.com is an online-only model that some are keeping an eye on as the possible next model. But again, as with newspapers -- if the money dries up, then what?

[upi402]

15. I pay for The Nation online and it

feels like I'm planting a tree AND feeding Katrina & Co. as I read.

[stillcool]

16. I think a writers work needs to be..

protected somehow. A pay to read thing, where the work could not be copied and pasted all over the net. I guess there would have to be some kind of copyright fine or something. We do it with books.

[Shakespeare]

6. +5

I'm a former print journalist, and have watched a few of my friends lose their jobs over the last year.

It's not funny, and it's not "deserved" in any way, and we're all the poorer for it.

[ogneopasno]

7. Exactly. It's the attitude that they deserve it that floors me. Oh, really? So who's going to step

in and attend county board meetings every week to keep them honest? Who's going to comb through the financial reports of the local public company or the city's building records to trace down where that missing permit just might point to a little bit of corruption? It's not the ones laughing about out-of-work journalists, that's for damn sure.

I'm sorry about your friends. Where did you work?

[Shakespeare]

9. I worked at a couple of mid-size TX papers, but it was years ago.

However, I still have friends at those papers, as well as the Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, LA Times, Baltimore Sun, and the San Antonio Express--folks who'd been at those papers for YEARS, and got laid off.

I'll always miss being a reporter, but right now I'm relieved not to be working with an ax over my head.

[ogneopasno]

11. I hear you, I hear you. It was a grand business.

[roseBudd]

19. I agree, the GOP will not mourn the passing of newspapers, newspapers shine a light on cockroaches..

they sue to enforce sunshine laws.

They send a reporter to every county BoE till however late it takes and if it were not for a cub reporter assigned to the Warren County Ohio BoE on Nov. 4, 2004, DUers would be unaware that Warren County made the press wait in a first floor lobby while they counted votes 2 floors above.

[upi402]

8. Thanks for the tip... I only heard the term Schadenfreude on Franken's

Air America Radio show. Never saw it in print. I stopped reading the hometown rag after the mid 90's and the relentless pro-business spin. Meeting a deadline and having only 2 minutes to confirm 3 sources is impossible. Most are excellent at that. But there is always a tendency to go with the stock punditry for citations and quotes. Labor was NEVER EVER EVER, not fucking ONCE!!!! consulted on any issue. Never.

So fuckemall. They cashed their checks. They sold the soiled bedding. And now they should spend a few sleepless nights like rest of us have for decades. It's a given that the prime fault lies in HR, senior editors (not copy), producers, etc. and not in the new hire with a fresh communications degree. Still, they turned and toed the line and remained silent as the old guard was sacked, one by one. Now they deserve to have to pull themselves up by the bootstraps like they arrogantly preached so often.

[ogneopasno]

10. Now that I've drawn you in,

I'll tell you that while I consider myself first a copy editor, the last job I had was as a city editor who oversaw six reporters, including two business reporters. In our business stories, we got labor's position on every story where it was merited, and sometimes where it wasn't. I assigned photos of pickets. My reporters were smart, dedicated people who had no tendencies at all to go with "stock punditry," and never did they have to get three sources in two minutes for a story.

If you've got specific issues with specific editors at your hometown rag, that's fine. But the way you're writing it makes it sound like you think every newspaper in this nation is like that one -- and like you don't know a thing about how newsrooms work -- and to that I strongly object.

[upi402]

14. lol

yep, you know it all and i'm a clueless mutt from the street


2 local papers, 1 nearby paper, and many more... i fought the trashing of the 4th estate for decades to no effect. i fought for brave journalists so that they could be empowered to report the concerns of workers and the poor. they never did, some to remain in their job. some were indoctrinated and deluded.

good for you -reporting labor's side, that's truly great. cuz i had to read wsj to get that in my 'liberal' state.

so to be clear;
1- real journalists and old school (not solely pro business) journalists are my heroes. gratitude to these.
2- sold out, deluded, wannabe 'monied elite' journalists are trash. they have made their bed and will now see what it feels like. just like those they neglected/belittled for years. piss on these and only these. not those in 1- above, but in 2- here.


i'll eat their Republican lunch now. we've had to live elbows-out for many years, hang on to your Chicklets soft fingered elites. there was no art from labor's side in our papers, no interviews, nothing. this area is not alone. good for you for standing tall, deep gratitude to you for doing so. you're a true patriot and likely took some heat for it. and now, was there pressure to side with big biz at your rag?

so if you're a 2- you may want to show hostility to me. if a 1- you must be glad folks like me are out here who are aware oh the sacrifice and service. and boy my spidey senses are tellin' me something!

[ogneopasno]

18. Ha! And so I am paid back for my cheap shot.

I appreciate your clarification. On the news side, no, there was no pressure to side with big biz. There was, in fact, little pressure at all. I took no heat for my approach to coverage, either.

I simply cannot join you in the joy you seem to feel at the large losses at news organizations. I've seen so few people like those you describe in such detail at any newspaper I've worked at, I find the broad brush bewildering.

[roseBudd]

21. I agree with you, the vitriol towards newspapers makes me feel like I am on Free Republic

[librechik]

17. I'm sure we can all enjoy the demise of William Kristol

at least for the brief time it took him to get a new job in the bosom of the RW.

Sigh.

We need broadsides, and pamphleteers! (only using recycled paper or something.) People will always need a little something to hold and read, won't they? While nursing a cup of coffee in a McDonald's so as to avoid walking the streets? To alert pedestrians to events they might like to attend and so on? I hate to think of a future without a local Herald or Tribune or Eagle. I started out doing pasteup when you had to glue the paragraphs onto the layout page!

Sometimes I'm almost persuaded we were taken over by aliens instead of ravenous corporate pirates. These changes getting rammed down our throats seem so inhuman.

[roseBudd]

20. Kristol is in no jeopardy, the right subsidizes people like Kristol & Goldberg

They do not subssidize Krugman, Cynthia Tucker, Leonard Pitts, Eugene Robinson, Fareed Zakaria or Dan Frromkin

[roseBudd]

22. k&r it's time that DUers acknowledge that the majority of the information that makes us so

well informed came from a newsroom.

Staffed by reporters.

And more likely than not bankrolled by some type of newspaper.

Is it perfect?

Of course not. But it is a hell of a lot better than the alternative, which is no newspapers.

And if you think the Repugnants won't celebrate the demise of the NYTimes and the Washington Ppost you are mistaken.

Iraq, renditions, the Downing Street memo, you wouldn't know about it if it weren't for a newspaper.