Problem 1: This Reuters story
in the Chicago Trib about Embridge pipelines. Entirely a US/Canada
story. Entirely reported and edited from Bangalore, India. Meanwhile,
friend Leo Lincourt notes "I
like how it had the unlinked URL and the placeholder for where the
factbox was supposed to go." Hmm, maybe the Trib is outsourcing website
content management.
Problem
2: The L.A. Times has a paywall. It appears similar to the NYT's. I
know of know "LAClean." But, in Firefox, going to "private browsing"
defeats it.
This isn't some small chain, some small newspaper.
This is the L.A. Times, with a paywall even more "fake" than the New York Times.
And,
the MSM wonders why it continues to struggle financially. Web-savvy
readers dodge fake paywalls, to get news stories that are relatively
"thin" because papers still don't "get it" on paywalls and financial
hemorrhaging.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
From frying pan to fire
Having left the daily newspaper which, personally and at the corporate level, came to the belief last summer that massive Facebooking and Twittering by everybody, including copy editors who never are out and about on news stories, was the "answer" to today's journalism revenue streams even as the company refuses to paywall websites, I may have gone from the frying pan to the fire.
(Oh, and now that I've left, I'll identify that previous newspaper as the Odessa American, part of Freedom Communications. And, despite being in the middle of the Permian Basin oilfield boom, the parent company, now owned primarily by its pre-Chapter 11 creditors, is continuing to tighten the editorial screws; I was replaced by a three-day-a-week person.)
Anyway, I'm now at a semiweekly, part of a group of newspapers owned by two "veterans," which is worse yet.
1. The owner allegedly published the exec editor to make him a minority owner, and it never happened. A recipe for bitterness right there, eh?
2. They're both "yellers."
3. They compete with another paper in the same area, which actually has more staff, and expect staff here to do more.
4. And, I've worked at many "community" newspapers that had "advertorial" special sections. I've never before worked at one that assigned stories about a particular advertiser before the sold ad was in the bag. I've worked at one now, though.
Well, if life has "learning experiences," there's plenty here.
And, at least Odessa was well organized as a newspaper. This place isn't. And, I may well be posting more about that soon.
(Oh, and now that I've left, I'll identify that previous newspaper as the Odessa American, part of Freedom Communications. And, despite being in the middle of the Permian Basin oilfield boom, the parent company, now owned primarily by its pre-Chapter 11 creditors, is continuing to tighten the editorial screws; I was replaced by a three-day-a-week person.)
Anyway, I'm now at a semiweekly, part of a group of newspapers owned by two "veterans," which is worse yet.
1. The owner allegedly published the exec editor to make him a minority owner, and it never happened. A recipe for bitterness right there, eh?
2. They're both "yellers."
3. They compete with another paper in the same area, which actually has more staff, and expect staff here to do more.
4. And, I've worked at many "community" newspapers that had "advertorial" special sections. I've never before worked at one that assigned stories about a particular advertiser before the sold ad was in the bag. I've worked at one now, though.
Well, if life has "learning experiences," there's plenty here.
And, at least Odessa was well organized as a newspaper. This place isn't. And, I may well be posting more about that soon.
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