JESSICA DaSILVA

This is a fantastic entry Jessica.

I think the Tribune is doing exactly what needs to be done — something very few are willing to do in this industry.

What kind of support does Janet have from the higher-ups in advertising and circulation? From the publisher?

Not sure if an intern is privy to such things, but I’d be interested to get their thoughts.

If I were your boss, I’d fire you for posting this. Is this your first job?

Question: If it is “better to keep one more reporter in Tampa than a sports reporter in a town about four hours north of Tampa”, then why not simply bring that sports reporter back Tampa instead of laying him off? This isn’t a case of keeping one more reporter here than there, it’s a case of having one fewer reporter at your paper, period. And from all things that have been said about that particular sports reporter, it seems like he was a true asset to the paper:

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/index.php/topic,58169.0.html

Other points that caught my eye:
– “Sometimes she feels temptation to get out of this business and join PricewaterhouseCoopers where she can have a decent salary and lifestyle.”

A decent salary and lifestyle compared to whom? The lowly peons working there (or the ones who just got laid off)? As editor-in-chief, I sincerely doubt she is struggling to make ends meet. But it’s good to know she always has that fallback route. Now, as for the people who just got axed …

– The apparent solutions presented are nothing new in this industry and have already been tried at various other places, including the elimination of the beat system and similar organizations of the personnel. To any journalist who has worked in the biz for a few years, hyperlocalism is old news, and it has been used by management more as a veiled justification for cuts in budget and staff than as a real mechanism for positive change. How does drastically eliminating staff improve your local coverage (you can make up for national coverage with wire content, but you need bodies for the local)?

Let me ask you this: If you went to Janet, or any other top exec in this industry, right now with solid evidence that people want better national coverage in their paper, do you think they will embrace that approach as much as they are embracing hyperlocal?

– Her point about the web site needing to be the primary product is a good one.

Sometimes heroism and villainy are just different perspectives on the same action.

Through most of your post, I did not want to shout “You go, girl!”

It’s sophomoric and juvenile. Clearly you have no clue about concepts such as basic spelling.

well, OF COURSE the primary franchise of a local newspaper is its local coverage. hasn’t it ALWAYS been that way? why do so many newspapers seem to be finding that out only now? what the hell have they been thinking all these years?

i am at a loss to understand why a sports reporter, of all things, would have EVER been based in a town four hours away from the home office.

newspaper executives are talking a lot these days about “business models,” but it is painfully obvious that they lost sight of the business model of local news coverage in the local newspaper long ago. WHY?

further, newspapers are now GIVING AWAY on the internet the one thing they have always had to sell: local news coverage and in-depth analysis that NO ONE ELSE is or will provide. newspaper executives bemoan declining subscriptions and revenues, but they have plenty of readers on the internet. the point is, why in the world would the public BUY something they can get FREE? exactly what kind of business model is THAT?

one by one, newspapers — which historically have been incompetent at marketing themselves — have been cutting their own throats ever since the advent of the internet. i love being able to read newspapers from across the country on the internet, but they are not making any money off me.

indeed, newspapers have been doing everything they can to PUSH paying readers TO the free internet. that’s a “business model” for extinction. but it continues.

Jessica,
I admire your enthusiasm. You remind me of myself when I was a plucky young intern at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. You might have heard of that paper. It’s the one that more than a year ago instituted “revolutionary” changes similar to the ones you so breathlessly praised. Well guess what? Reporters at that paper settled back into a beat structure because that’s the most effective way to gather news. Janet is trying to reinvent the wheel, and that’s admirable. But the fact of the matter is newspapers are going to die because in an age when we can get news from across the world in a matter of seconds, the idea of printing the news once a day on dead trees seems hopelessly nostalgic.

And if Janet doesn’t think St. Pete is competition, she needs to wake up. If I ran Poynter, I’d pump every last penny I had in savings into Hillsborough County and crush the Trib. The newspaper is a horrible business model, but it’s still the only one that makes money. (By the way, the Trib is not in the red. I received those Media General quarterly earnings statements in my e-mail box for the five-and-a-half-years I worked at the Trib, and there’s no way the paper is losing money. If it was, MG would have sold it for parts.)

The only thing that can save the local newsgathering organizations we now call newspapers is finding and retaining good people. On that account, Janet severely screwed the pooch when she laid off Scott Carter. There is still dead weight on the sports staff. Instead of laying off a valuable person to save a few thousand bucks in relocation fees, the Trib could have cut a slacker, brought Scott back to Tampa and allowed him to continue to practice the kind of journalism Janet covets so. Instead, the paper will pay more in actual dollars and in creative capital for jettisoning a valuble employee and keeping people who don’t earn their paychecks.

I hope you have a long, prosperous career in journalism. My guess is that you’ll end up writing for a Web site, just as I do now. Newspapers died a long time ago, so don’t waste your time kissing your boss’s butt for her most recent attempt to prop up the corpse.

@Patrick - I’m not really privy to the information, but if I hear anything, I’ll post it.

@Abe - I was originally worried about it, but there’s an open atmosphere at the Trib about my blogging. And today, I was complimented by the managing editor for my coverage. Janet also told me she appreciated my words of support. I know if there were a problem, they would let me know; if there were a problem, I would leave the topic alone.

@Richard - Thanks, I always get that confused.

@John - It is purely geographic. The admins praised Scott as a good reporter, but there are other resources to get the news about the Seminoles in the paper. To my knowledge, that’s the story.

Also, Janet might not be trying to maker her personal ends meet, but she is desperately trying to find a way to tie up those loose ends in the newsroom. And you have to admit that a job that doesn’t require you reducing your work staff from 250 to about 200 seems a lot less stressful.

Drastically eliminating the staff has nothing to do with improving local coverage. The Trib has no choice in how many people they can afford to pay - that issue is black and white. Profits are plummeting and they can’t do it anymore.

And maybe these ideas have been tried before, but were the times as desperate? Were 900 journalists getting laid off in one week? All I’ve heard from the old-timers is “Times have always been bad, but not like this - never like this.” I think with their level of dedication, they’ll find a way to make this work.

I also truly believe people want their local news because it directly affects them. However, If there were solid evidence that people wanted national and international news (and it came from someone more seasoned than an intern), I think they would dedicate their staff to that. The Trib would probably play that up and still provide local coverage.

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

Great post. What a sad day, but Janet’s direction is the right one.

But this is a newsroom reorganization, not a new business model. They’re still just going to sell ads online, right?

Her comparison to the music industry is on target. But they’re doing more to experiment with new revenue streams than newspapers.

Hope the publisher will be just as bold on the business side as Janet is on the news side.

Jessica
I enjoyed your piece on the Tribune, but having just resigned from the company after 27 years, your comments about PricewaterhouseCoopers are a bit naive. I left to join PwC not because I was unwilling to stay and “fight for journalism,” but because Media General offers no hope for any of its employees, and certainly makes no effort to keep those with institutional knowledge. My extensive local coverage of the arts, in fact, was irrelevant to the cause of “hyperlocal.” The Tribune is full of talented, compassionate people, but the owners of the paper are bean counters who know nothing about running a news organization, much less how to plan for fluxes in the economy. I fought for 27 years at the Tribune. Now, it’s time to start caring about my own life - and my future.
Thank you.
Kurt Loft
fomer Tampa Tribune reporter and critic

Well, gee, the boss commented on your “words of support.” Good for you (note the sarcasm).

By the way, what words of support do you have for your colleagues who now have to go find other employment?

“Young and naive” _ um, no. “Clueless” might be a better word.

Not much of a clarification, especially when you cheer for the “Just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” woodenheads. Years from now, textbooks will be written about the cluelessness of today’s newspaper management.

Also, I tend to wonder how employment law would look upon the dismissal of someone who might have agreed to relocate out of the coverage area, but then was dismissed for being out of the coverage area.

Hey Kurt,

It’s Jamie, your former CCI expert.

Good to see you’ve moved and are doing well. Your words were dead on and so appropriate. I know there are a lot of us who feel the same, whether from the Trib or other papers; it’s so widespread.

For all of you current and former Tribbers out there, good luck. I think what’s happening there is so sad. I fear for the future of that paper, especially with some of the cuts they’re making.

“Nice to get insider stuff. Sad that it comes from an intern who one would think is the future of journalism who can’t even spell laid off.”

That’s OK. If she stays in this business for a couple years, she’ll learn how to spell that soon enough.

Jessica, I really do admire your enthusiasm, but your post comes off extremely naive. I say this not as some old timer who’s yearning for the good ol’ days. I’m 29 and spent 6 years full time and 10 years total in newspapers, and believe me when I tell you that I’ve heard this same song and dance often enough, at my paper and at other papers. Many of the veterans who are apprehensive about these changes are so not because they fear change, but because they have been through this way too many times — a round of layoffs, accompanied by a talk about how the paper needs to change, some sort of plan for change, and a motivational speech about how we will turn the paper around. A year later, they get more job cuts and more resource cuts that undermine the very changes the new plan was supposed to implement. It doesn’t take many of those to realize that these “changes” aren’t about saving the paper but about squeezing a few more pennies out of the current, defunct business model.

“Drastically eliminating the staff has nothing to do with improving local coverage.”
Umm … they may not be presented together as part of the same plan, but staffing level has everything to do with the quality of coverage. It’s a simple concept: More reporters = more coverage; fewer reporters = less coverage.

“And maybe these ideas have been tried before, but were the times as desperate?”
So are you saying that if these ideas didn’t work in better times, when papers had more staff and resources and greater room of error, they have a better chance of working in a time when papers have less of those things?

As for the axing of the sports reporter in Tallahassee being purely geographic, what does it say about management when it decides who to cut purely by drawing a line on a map rather than take into account quality of work? Add in the story above about why that reporter moved to Tallahassee, and I don’t know how you can view the people who axed this reporter as heroes.

Like I said, I admire your enthusiasm. But part of what makes a great journalist is having a good BS detector. I think you need to work on developing yours.

Thanks for the insider’s view. And ignore all the naysayers and spelling-correctors. There’s always a lot of anger that surfaces when change happens, and people lash out at everyone and everything. The fact that you’re “just an intern” makes the old farts just feel all the more empowered to kick you around. Don’t take it personally.

It is indeed a terrible thing when people lose their jobs. It’s also a terrible thing to be the person terminating all those hopes and dreams. But sometimes it just has to happen.

Keep writing, keep learning, but don’t hook up your own dreams to any one industry or business model.

Hilary, what’s cringe-worthy to me is someone saying “You go, girl” to a person who just laid (correct spelling) off good reporters, some of whom (the FSU beat writer in Tallahassee) made decisions to be a part of the newspaper which has now told them to hit the road.

The newspaper business isn’t in trouble because of the “old fart” reporters who are getting axed. It’s because of the idiots in management, like “you go, girl” Janet Coats.

My guess is, as Janet Coats was bravely hobbling (note sarcasm) to the elevator on her crutches, a lot of people wanted to kick them out from under her. Because that’s what she did to a lot of good people.

I hope she’s a better mother than journalist.

This post (and its accompanying comments) seems to sum up the fundamental problems of the drastic changes affecting media. On one hand, idealistic students like Jessie argue that major overhauls are for the best, and she makes a very good point. As Coats said, newspapers will die if something isn’t done soon.

On the other hand, though, good people with families are losing their jobs. It’s understandable for them to feel upset when someone with little real-world experience and no family to support — someone like Jessie — waxes poetic about the “love and passion” journalism demands. The multiple comments criticizing Jessie’s spelling seem to serve as a guise for this anger.

The one thing everyone can agree on is that watching the slow demise of journalism is painful. Maybe it’s time to find more common ground rather than tearing into the next generation of journalists. Young or old, nobody wants to see news reporting die out.

Reading all all these comments trying to dismiss DaSilva as naive I can’t help but feel a bit disturbed.
To try to dismiss anyone, especially a journalist, as naive is ridiculous. The entire profession is based on the notion that there is a “Truth” out there that journalists can always get closer to.
While such a thing seems like such a small light in such a great distance, the faith that that distance can be conquered and that light can be brightened is what keeps journalism going. To try to dismiss someone as too naive to be jaded is the antithesis of the purpose of this profession.

When I hear “hyperlocal,” I want to cry. Sure, there are lots of great local stories out there, and there are some fascinating people with interesting lives, but “hyperlocal” invariably turns into retyped press releases from local nonprofits that some “community” reporter turns into a bylined story, usually full of spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes, with names whose spellings change in every graf and people who are just “so excited” to be getting the word out about teenage nosepicking or whatever the cause is this week.

Local news is stuff that’s going on, like politicians who sell votes, police officers who are doing their jobs well (or not), developers buying up governmental bodies or tearing up wetlands, local celebrities getting popped for DUI or dope, local goofballs declaiming on the “bad choices” they’ve made in their lives, and on and on.

There’s a hunger out there for news in the community, and if we’d just stop recooking press releases and got out there and talked to people, we’d get some great stories that people would read.

I worked at a paper several years ago that was being crushed between two large dailies (both of which announced big cutbacks recently). Our editor made the same announcement: we weren’t competing with those other papers; it was just us and our adoring readers. Well, we missed some big stories, blew off another story about a theater group going bust (because the head honcho of the organization was a friend of the publisher and he didn’t want to embarrass her) and basically became a press release service for the cops. The paper still exists, barely, but it’s a shell of its old self.

I love newspapers, even the bad ones and the ones I disagree with, and I will miss them when they’re on the Web but will still read them. Hopefully, there will be a place for me in the future of the news business, but if not, I guess that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

@Elaine - I do apologize for everyone I offended because that was not my intent. I’ve updated my last entry to explain that I was not attacking any one person, but a general sentiment of fear and upset paired with a lack of action everywhere. I’m not talking about any specific reporters at any specific newspapers anywhere. That is not the case and those who know me know I would NEVER do that.

And I *do* know how it feels to not be able to afford anything. As I said in my explanation, I am the oldest of four kids. I know what it is to hurt financially. I might not have a family to provide for, but I’ve watched my parents struggle to provide for us my entire life.

“Like Hilary, I also find it noteworthy that the more brutal attacks are — as usual — from people too spineless to use their real names. It’s one thing to commit whistle-blowing under the cover of anonymity, and quite another to insult people and denigrate them without taking responsibility.”

Yeah, it’s about as spineless as, oh I don’t know, dismissing people’s criticism because they didn’t use their full name on a blog comment (because, you know, it’s so customary for everyone to use their full names in cyberspace), especially when the blog has no apparent full-name policy. There are many legitimate points of criticism here, and dismissing the content of the comments because of the lack of a full name attached to them is asinine. And it’s funny that you only took issue with people criticizing Jessica’s entry without full names, but not people praising her without full names.

NOTE: I posted a couple comments previously with only my first name, but my full name is attached to this comment in the hope that the discussion will actually focus on the substance of my post rather than which part of my name I used.

Did’t the Trib already promise “hyperlocal” about a year or so ago when they ditched their broadsheet regional editions in favor of tabs and “new and improved” local Web sites for plces like South Tampa, Brandon, etc?

I seem to recall “hyperlocal” coming up not that long ago, and I’d like to hear everyone’s take on what that’s done for the company to date.

Nice to read the account of Janet Coats’ attempt to rally the troops. But it’s really a bunch of crap. She should have just slammed down $500 on a table and said, “We’re still going to turn out killer fuck’n stories for the 200,000+ who buy this paper every day and the thousands more who read online. And here’s $500 for the next person who cranks out a buzz-making enterprise story. Remember everyone. None of our audience gives a crap about the state of the news business. They just want to be informed, entertained and wowed by their local newspaper.”

Back to reality, the readers are entitled to expect a consistent quality product, which is nearly impossible without staff. Without that quality, more and more will dump the paper.

When sales drop at McDonald’s and other established brands, they don’t change the menu, they add new wrinkles or boost advertising. Poor performing stores will shut down, but the model stays.

ONLY in journalism would management be so egomaniacal to believe that they would give away the product free on the Internet and sales, which drive ad rates, would not suffer.

I broke my ass in the Trib newsroom for a handful of years, and had to fight off management egos less interested in great work and dedicated staff than diversity, back-scratching and making sure reporters have no defined career path.

Remember Ms intern, great companies take cater to their customers and their employees.

As previously mentioned, I do strongly disagree with what Jessica said. And unfortunately, she probably WILL make a lot of enemies with her post. The aforementioned Michael is one example.

But as a friend said to me a bit ago, she’s an intern. Most of us were interns at some point before getting our first real job, and as you know, that’s the time you’re supposed to make your biggest mistakes. I sure as hell made my share. It doesn’t excuse her, but I’m guessing we were all ready to set the journalistic world on fire when we were her age.

The decision to write this particular post may not have been the best, especially because it’s rubbing a heavy dose of salt in a wound that’s very, very raw. But I do agree with Craig that this shouldn’t be used to destroy her career.

Jessica, I think you may have alienated a lot of people in the industry with what you wrote, even with your attempts to correct it. Intern or not, you need to realize that your words have impact and power. That should have been one of the first you learned at UF’s J-school (of which I’m a proud graduate). As I said, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but in an industry that’s struggling as it is, you really need to weigh what you say and how you say it. I think this has been a hard lesson, but a valuable one. I hope you learn from it.

I don’t know which part of this little blog item made me most feel like projectile vomiting, the part where the writer is a fawning sycophant or the part where she wrote, “You go girl!” — the classic line that some woman utter when serving as a female friend’s stupidity enabler. Just to be on the safe side, I think I’ll puke on general principle.

Drama, navel-gazing and shooting the messenger. The pillars of journalism

“Amen!”

“You go, girl!”

I shudder and weep for you, as I would anyone else to possess even inward reactions of such sentiment at a meeting called because of a downsizing that has already cost 10 people their positions, throwing their lives and those connected them into chaos and economic peril at a time where career options in any field — let alone media — are growing scarcer by the day.

Obviously, you’ve never lost your job.

You’ve never sat in a conference room where you’d received a positive performance evaluation two weeks earlier — the only kind of evaluation you’ve ever had in your career, mind you — and been told the services of you and several of your co-workers were no longer required because of the “changing financial conditions.”

You’ve never had to hear that because of your salary — which is by no American standard “high” — you will be replaced by intern and entry-level people whose main attribute is that they will work cheap.

And you’ve never been seated across the table from your boss and told, “Corporate says I’m not supposed to give advice, but as your friend, I’m telling you that you should take this buyout.”

Thankfully, that you possessed enough restraint to avoid bellowing those afore-mentioned four words of exclamations in the meeting. Yet by writing them here, you’ve nullified the outward cordiality you displayed yesterday.

May you learn a lesson here and you never again write anything as devoid of tact and class as your blog post today. And may you never have to experience what I and so many others have endured from a line of work that we love dearly, but clearly does not love us back.

Jessica,

I’m curious, do you do any actual work or do you just blog all day long, patting yourself on the back? If so, congratulations you really do have a future in this business.

This girl is obviously trying to get hired at the Trib. Interns should stick to doing good work - and stay away from blogging.

When is everyone going to talk about this having nothing to do with news? It’s business. The media industry is just like any other business.
Housing market crashes + low car sales + ad revenues going down + angry share holders = death of newspapers

Now when is someone going to figure out how to make money on the Internet?

OK, so the young blogger may be guilty of a touch of naivete–not even a misdemeanor offense in my book. I really like what Mindy McAdams writes about all of this: I’d really like to see all of these apparently old hacks write a blog post half as good as what Jessica did here. Much easier, I guess, just to throw stones in the comments section under the protection of anonymity. The telling testament to Jessica’s new-media skills are the comments above, most of which were terribly interesting and illuminating–until, that is, some assholes decided to go all ad feminam on her. When we get rich comments threads like this on our site–not often enough–I know we’ve done something right. Anyhow, the ghoulish part of all of this is the moron who’s trying to get others blackballed for future hires. Don’t you get it? If we don’t figure this thing out, there’ll be no positions to prevent your enemies from occupying!

Welcome to the real world. Newspapers are a business. When they lose money, people lose their jobs. No different from GM or any other company.

Unlike radio and TV that live by their ratings, editors never cared if what they wrote was relevant to their readers.,,,they were off on some sacred quest for writing awards handed out by their peers.

News folks never wanted to work with the business side of the industry and paid only lip service to embracing the Internet and other new technologies…so now the chickens come home to roost.

Jessica,

Don’t worry about all the people threatening to black ball you from the industry.

They fall under two categories: People who won’t have jobs shortly, and thus will have no impact on your future employment. Or they are the kinds of people you don’t want to work for anyway. Do you really want to work in 1974 newsroom?

Of course not. Heck, I’d love to be banned from riding the Titanic too.

My blog has ruffled way more feathers than yours has (so far?). And it leads to job offers all the time. The people worth working for love that you blog. They love that you’re thinking about what’s next.

And the people who tell you not to blog are the kinds of people who are dragging this industry back. Keep your head up high. You’ll be a star.

Come on, the real issue here isn’t office politics.

I’m a copyeditor for a weekly journal published by a 150-year-old nonprofit. That is, job security is good and pay is mediocre at best. Although I don’t work on the news side, I feel as if I’ve got as much at stake as everyone writing here, particularly after attending American Copy Editors Society meetings in ‘01 and ‘02 (just before the newspaper business started going south, near as I can tell).

I can already anticipate a time when no facts are trusted on their face, when all sources but a very select few are considered shaky. I sincerely hope that newspapers are among the trusted sources; even if corrections have to be run sometimes, there will continue to be (I hope) people with the journalistic impulse who recognize, among other things, the need for an informed electorate. However, there could be very few surviving papers, and perhaps they would be overtly partisan as in the old days - well, so much for the informed electorate. I wonder whether one of the present-day political news sites will reach such a high status, but if so, the journalists there will likely not enjoy the job security of a unionized newspaper employee of 1990.

Energy conservation is going to put a stop to traditional newspaper production sooner or later, irrespective of all the other factors affecting papers today. Huge amounts of energy are required to make newsprint, transport it, print the paper, transport it again, and pick it up for recycling. (Plus, at my age I have little energy to sort through the day’s Washington Post and clip what I want, so they pile up…)

Well at least Pat Thornton found a way to promote his/her blog. I think people who believe blogs are the best source of news are who’s dragging the industry back. Blogs are where our frequently ill-informed public get information like Obama is a Muslim (or the Anti-Christ) and other ridiculous info they begin to take as fact. Blogs are a great source of entertainment and communication, but if blogs become the primary source of news and information for our society, it will be a frightening place.

I hope that Mindy McAdams takes note that I am posting under my real name. And I dearly hope that McAdams and others like her at Media General and the Tampa Tribune are soon on a street corner with signs reading “Will Manage (Poorly) For Food.”
To the “lovely and talented” Jessica DaSilva:
When I was “intern age” I certainly believed I knew everything about journalism and newspapers. Thank God I didn’t have a blog on which to post. Some newsroom veteran would have killed me with a pica pole (Google to find out what that is).
Your enthusiastic blog should have taught you a few lessons:
1. Unlike your private diary/thoughts, what you blog or post on Al Gore’s invention is there for the world to see and read.
2. Writing on blogs need to be filtered. Think before you write. Read before you post. If you haven’t rewritten most of your post before it’s posted, you’re headed for trouble.
3. That’s what editors do. They just dont’ change “layed” to “laid.” They ask questsions like, “Is this what you mean to say?” “This is not clear; can you tell me what you’re trying to say?” “Are you sure this is what you were aiming for?”
I’m a 36-year veteran of newspapers who recently left the business. It is dying if not already dead. Your editing hero is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. And “hyper local” translates to “hyper cheap.” The Tampa Tribuine’s investigative group will wind up getting one good-sized story a year and a lot of nickel and dime gotcha stories that will do more harm than good.
One last interesting thing about the Internet. You find all sorts of things everywhere. You quoted your Editor Hero: “We can see a better future for journalism right across the bridge on the other side, but the bridge is on fire, and if we just stand here, we are going to burn up with it.”
A McClatchy veep in charge of news coverage used the same analogy and wording on his web site. Turns out your hero is a plagarist. Too bad she doesn’t understand about attributing the source of her pithy analogy.

I don’t deny blogging has its uses. But for the regular reader, how would they know your aforementioned blogs are any better sources of news than any other blog. Fact is, we know what we get with supermarket tabloids. Anyone with a computer and an opinion can start a blog, which is why I think it isn’t the best source for news and information. Maybe that will change, but as they say, well, everyone has opinions. As long as there are no guidelines or standards put in place and anyone regardless of training or experience can weigh in on any issue, blogs are dangerous places for people looking for legitimate news sources.

Jessica:

Before the Tampa Tribune makes a big mistake, Janet Coats should read this WSJ blog from early June.

http://blogs.wsj.com/buzzwatch/2008/06/04/buzz-links-surf-with-caution-in-webs-most-dangerous-domains/?mod=googlenews_wsj

There’s a link to a story about the Washington Post’s hyperlocal LoudounExtra.com, which debuted last July. The site has bombed so far.

Jessica, good job. This was an important post.

Part of the proof that it is an important post are all of the naive journalists who have come on here and called you naive, who have exposed their own foolish ignorance of what is really going on, who have flaunted red herring arguments and displayed reasoning skills that belie their claims to professionalism.

Janet’s ideas are certainly nothing new to those of us who have been doing online newspapers for a while, but they are right on track. The old guard doesn’t like the directions that journalism must go to survive, but that’s there problem.

Keep your enthusiasm and your passion. We need more of that these days.

Please sign up for wiredjournalists.com — we would love to have you in our group.

Mr. Owens:
Not sure if your comments are aimed at me. However, I want to make clear that while I might have been part of the “old guard” I embraced the possibilities of the Internet long before the executives at my former paper did. They, like many other executives, started yelling “fire” long after the house had burned down.
It’s not about the delivery method or the media platform. It’s about content. Getting ready of talented, productive, veteran reporters and editors is no way to grow a newspaper or web site.
The Tampa Tribune editor is a couple of years late saying saying that the web site is more important than the print product.

Just want to add my voice (and name) here to those supporting Jessica.

To those who disagree, hey, that’s fine. Let’s talk. But if you’re the kind of “journalist” who somehow thinks it’s honorable to slag someone anonymously, you are most definitely part of the problem. Please get out of the way. Thank you.

The post by “CRAIG” is worth repeating, at least one senior editor at a large, pretty respected/successful, daily feels. Trashing a clearly passionate and committed young journalist serves absolutely no purpose. Disagree, agree, whatever. But do so with at least some hint of civility…

CRAIG
Said Michael: I’m an editor at a medium-sized paper and I’m sending your name around to everyone I know in the business to make sure that you are never hired anywhere.

Michael: I’m an editor at a gigantic website and before that was in the print business for 20 years up to the largest metros, and believe me, if you had a full name, I would also send it around to everybody I knew to tell them not to hire the idiot who is willing to write off the career of a young woman who truly has a passion for a trouble profession — something we really need right now — because of something she wrote in a single blog entry when she was just starting out.

Another rah-rah from a rookie brainwashed into thinking a boss “gets it” and they’re being brave and innovative and all these other people are just resisting change and maybe they ought to just move on, right?

newsflash: bosses killed newspapers. follow them is like following the captain of the titanic. but you’re young, so where else do you have to go?

be strong, little journalist. we know you’ll fight on.

P.S. enough with the calls for “supporting Jessica.” For Christ’s sake, this is an intern who is pissing on people in a newsroom as they are being shown the door. And self-aggrandizing in the process, not to mention brown-nosing an executive editor at a vulnerable time. This will be the last time I ever read her blog, to be sure. I am truly nauseous.

There’s a lot of hate in here. She’s an intern — and she’s already created more conversation than all of you “editors of mid-sized papers” have in your entire lousy careers. Get over yourselves.

Jessica, congrats on fueling the flames of the journalism world. I enjoyed the post, as well as “most” of the comments — with the exception of the ones suggesting you be fired, never hired, etc.

As several other comments mentioned, what concerns me is that there has been little discussed regarding a game plan for making money online. As we’re all finding out, journalism is more than a public service, it’s a business.

A newsroom’s best product — one that national players cannot compete with — is local coverage (or hyperlocal, if you enjoy throwing around the much cooler, news 2.0 buzzword). And newsrooms should do whatever they can to produce the best local content possible — even if it means restructuring.

It appears that most news companies have decided that better local news coverage, combined with new ways of selling online advertising is the best approach for surviving this “transition” period in the news industry.

Gannett (my employer) has implemented changes company-wide in its newsrooms, dubbed the “Local Information Center” approach. Gannett is also attempting to aggregate more of its local content into national products, resulting in more sales to national advertisers. And yes, there have been buyouts and other cuts along the way.

My point is that no matter what restructuring takes place, your primary product — local news — will continue to suffer if you do not have the funds to back it.

Needless to say, I would be interested in learning more about what advertising strategies the Tribune is planning.

You’ve got to admit, this blogger knows how to drive traffic. No small thing. To sum up the points so far:

Newspapers need to change. Good for you for changing.

Change or not, people who lose their jobs are hurting.

Management created this mess and deserves no applause.

At least there’s a plan this time.

The details of the plan are dubious. Assign a reporter out of the circulation area then cut him because he’s out of the circulation area?

Your plan is …

You shouldn’t have blogged about it.

You should have drowned your sorrows complaining about the boss.

I’m telling everyone in the industry not to hire you.

I’m not in your industry.

You spelled a word wrong.

You missed the point.

Jessica,

I hope by now you have taken the initiative to click on the link provided by Garey G. Ris and to go back and find the entry made by the McClatchy rep Wendell Barnhouse referred to so that you can see for yourself just how unoriginal and pointless your hero’s rhetoric actually was. If not, then you need to post haste.

I don’t think I can simplify this anymore than by reminding you that with a smaller staff and one that is increasingly devoid of experienced journalists with invaluable contacts, sources and knowledge, the notion that your news organization can improve its local or “hyperlocal” coverage is beyond ridiculous.

In no way am I trying to bring down your enthusiasm or insult your naivete, although your decision to type in the words “Amen,” and “You go, girl,” at a time when good people were being tossed to the street greatly disturbed me. I have read your explanation about how you were applauding Miss Coats for her “revisionist” plan and not for handing out pink slips, but nonetheless, you can now see how important it is to choose your words wisely and read and re-read before hitting enter.

This is a very trying and emotional time in our industry, so the tone of some of the responses you have gotten on this blog, while over-the-top in many instances, should not come as a surprise. Is there a light at the end of this long and dark tunnel? I sure hope so, and this is coming from a veteran journalist who did embrace the advent of multi-media, blogging, podcasts and vodcasts before they became as en vogue as they are now. But we still have a long way to go, and the short-sightedness of so many of the higher-ups, including your hero, is doing more to push us further away from that light.

And with that I will end this entry.

It’s an interesting post, and equally interesting thread that follows.

Like others, I admire your enthusiasm. But I also agree you probably should tone it down. I’d also encourage you to apply a little skepticism.

The problems of the TT are well known in the industry and stem from policies not dissimilar from what your executive is embarking on now: a radical makeover that puts more faith in change than in what we’ve learned as an industry. Declaring the print product is second to the online product for example doesn’t take into consideration that the majority of operating revenues still come from print. One day the reverse may be true, but until then it’s probably not advisable to kill the Golden Goose until it can’t quack anymore.

If there’s a traditional news product that makes more from online than print I haven’t seen it yet.

The fact of the matter is that change is inevitable, but absolutely no one has found a sustainable direction. It’s not in the way we do business currently, but it may well not be found in narrow definitions of hyperlocal, competition, and the broadband world. It’s just not that simple.

I certainly applaud your executive being willing to abandon past practices. But her admission that she doesn’t know where she’s going could be every bit as dangerous to the survival of the TT as doing nothing at all.

One more thing and then I’ll shut up. What bothers me the most probably isn’t Jessica but the fact that Ms Coats was able to snow Jessica so completely with her B.S.
Ms. Coats: You are conducting a salvage operation after a train wreck. Nothing wrong with that, necessarily, but please don’t dishonor the memory of the poor souls whose careers are lying mangled in the wreckage by pretending that you’re reinventing railroads.

I think the most disappointing thing about Jessica’s blog is that she and some of the other (young) posters here don’t see that what newspapers are doing now is what’s killing the industry. We want to be young and hip, they say, but what they really mean is pander to the lowest common denominator. What she doesn’t understand is that accuracy, information, ties to the co