The Dilbertization of The Record Continues

Borg? You Will Be Assimilated! (4.00 / 1)

You went for Dilbert when Star Trek was sitting there waiting for you.  :-)

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by: huntsu @ Mon Jun 30, 2008 at 22:34:01 PM UTC

Bergen County Deserves... (0.00 / 0)

....it's own independent daily newspaper dedicated to truly investigating and covering the news of this population and business dense area.

It always amazes and annoys me when I read stuff in the NY Times that is more "on the spot" about NJ politics that our own print media.

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by: Nick Lento @ Mon Jun 30, 2008 at 22:34:54 PM UTC

I'll be the person to say it. (4.00 / 1)

Does a journalist really need to be in a newsroom anymore? Reporting takes place on location, writing can be done anywhere and everything can be passed back and forth among journalists and editors via e-mail. Do they all really need the permanent desk space?

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by: dennisl @ Mon Jun 30, 2008 at 23:07:19 PM UTC

Journalism vs "Reporting" (0.00 / 0)

Just about any fairly well educated/competent smart articulate person can "report" the "news".

There is no shortage of "sources" that will practically write the "story" for you.

All the powerful vested interests are expert at spinning the truth.  

They hire pricey PR people whose job it is to throw enough "info-chaff" into the logosphere to obscure any serious inquiries into whatever it is that they want to cover up and/or to promote attention to whatever "truth"  it is that they want to "promote".

We need real INVESTIGATIVE journalists in NJ, and we need many hundreds of them.

If the profession is to be reduced to itinerant vagabonds writing in Panera's and Starbucks or out of their cars on short deadlines and with the added obligation of taking pictures and video; there's little chance that we'll get much more than the "popular wizdumb"ed version of events.

You can be sure that the wealthy powerful pols and business types all have their own offices and desks and easy access to all manner of support staff........all, of course fully paid for by taxpayers and consumers.

So, yes;  I do believe that these folks deserve to have their own "permanent" office spaces/desks etc.   Whether at home or in a newsroom or some combination thereof, a dedicated space for work is a good thing.

What NJ needs is media that is willing to deeply, aggressively and fearlessly question the status quo.   I don't see much of that.

Let's face it; corporate dominated media has very little incentive to question corporate dominated politics........follow the money, eh?

There's so so so much dirt just sitting there in plain sight, waiting to be "dug up"; yet (with rare exceptions) all we get is coverage of the data that the establishment is willing  to easily give up.

No wonder NJ is in massive debt and the crooks and liars continue to "legally" feed off of the honest hardworking taxpayers and consumers.

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by: Nick Lento @ Mon Jun 30, 2008 at 23:52:56 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Roving. (4.00 / 1)

It's one thing to recognize that new communications devices make roving easier - Woodward and Bernstein would have killed for cell phones in 1972 - but this isn't going on because publishers want to make things easier for their workers.

Steve nails it: this is about the decline of the work product following the decline of the working conditions, and the moronic management decisions (including featurizing the news) that have leached life out of newspapers all over the country.

A million paper cuts.

It's not a particularly snappy signature, but here's what I think we need in the next NJ Democratic State Chair.  

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by: Rosi Efthim @ Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 13:35:52 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

A Million Paper Cuts!!! (0.00 / 0)

What an apt image.  

Each individual assault on the equality of journalism can be easily "written off" as an "isolated incident" or a special case or a "disgruntled employee" or a budget efficiency or a minor accommodation to  an advertiser or..........you name it.    But the cumulative effect is that the Judith Millers tend to get well connected and promoted, in general, (unless the shit hits the fan big time as it did for her) and the real journalists who have an impulse to dig into the dirt that is at the core of our bipolar  political and corporate establishments are discouraged from making too many waves.

If someone like Bill Gates really wanted to have an impact on changing the way things are they would dedicate a billion bucks to fund real aggressive investigative journalism.......and another billion on massive voter education/registration would be cool.

After all, what advertiser is really going to want to fund an enterprise that's going to give out information that may result in an alarmed informed agitated electorate that will demand that the political system deliver honesty, fairness, integrity and common decency from the private and public sectors?

The business of business is to make money as quickly as possible and in the largest quantities possible; not to promote the common good for the most people for the long term.    And who pays the bills for corporate media?

The following video touches on some of the issues of what it means to be a writer in the public interest.  

Obviously, Hayden and Klein have a political/ideological agenda to promote....but hey; does anyone really believe that the existing commercial/corporate media establishment isn't de facto promoting a world view/ideology/agenda that is tantamount to the perpetuation of the status quo?

At least with advocacy journalism one knows up front that there is a POV.  

(Though Klein does say something amazingly/simplistically wrongheaded (imho) at the start of this video...see if you agree with me ;-)

The pretense of "objectivity" we get from corporate media, especially NJ corporate media,  is, generally, not credible.  

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by: Nick Lento @ Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 14:06:30 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Well, I can't entirely say I blame them. (0.00 / 0)

Of course working conditions are going to decline. This is, in fact, directly related with the AP's recent spat with bloggers. Quite frankly, bloggers are costing news organizations a boatload of money and they're not happy.

For example, Scott does his News Roundup everyday. He picks what he considers the important news, posts links and we read what's interesting. I'll see stuff like this on a few blogs and now I don't have any reason to pick up a physical newspaper or even to roam around individual newspaper websites.

In essence, newspaper publication used to be a team effort; you'd have people reporting on local news, people doing investigative journalism, and all sorts of other things. Now, you can read exactly what you care about and ignore the rest without even having to flip through the intermediate pages, at least catching a glimpse of the advertising. Hell, even Craigslist has destroyed local classified advertising in many places. Newspapers aren't happy because their entire model paying a large staff of journalists won't surivive much longer.

Summarily, blogs use newspapers' work to bring in their own traffic. For example, the AP knew it had no legal claim against Fair Use, but it had to do something; millions of people were reading linked headlines and summaries on blogs, being perfectly content not to read the entire article, when they used to read a newspaper (physical or online). These activities may not be the stated purpose of a blog or even a primary goal, but it is happening and newspapers are noticing the economic consequences, even if there's nothing they can do about it.

For better or worse, it seems somewhere between hypocritical and outright stupid to decry the downfall of newspaper journalism from a medium that is directly contributing to that downfall.

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by: dennisl @ Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 15:30:51 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

It's Not So Simple... (0.00 / 0)

Whatever we know (that isn't PR or spin or shilling or outright propaganda etc) is the result of someone, somewhere "committing journalism".

Whether that location is a traditional newspaper or a blog or whatever is of secondary importance.

My remarks re investigative journalism and the need for more of it apply across the board.   Most folks who are good at that need to be decently paid and to have commensurate working conditions etc.....it's costly to take weeks or months digging into an important story.  

It's not in the interest of the extant establishments for there to be many really great investigative journalists so there are all manner of "rationales" that traditional corporate media (especially old line newspapers) come up ways with to reduce their numbers.

As for indirectly referring to Steve Hart as either dumb or a hypocrite for using the web to criticize the de-gradation of some elements of the newspaper industry; that's silly.   Did you really think they would have published what he wrote in their letters to the editor page?

Suffice it to say that this is a large and complex area that can't accurately be "summed up" by anyone's pithyness (that includes me too ;-).

Here's a trailer that may be of interest for those who may have knowledge of the "Gonzo" journalism of Hunter Thompson.

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by: Nick Lento @ Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 22:01:19 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

What newspapers and the music industry have in common (4.00 / 1)

To dennisl: What utter bunk.

What the newspaper industry shares with the music industry is abject incompetence at managing a changing business landscape and a pathetic readiness to blame others for their woes. When newspapers blame bloggers for their declining sales, I hear echoes of record labels blaming "home taping" for lost revenues, even as they jacked up prices for their increasingly shoddy merchandise.

If blogs do anything, they help readers find the stories of value that night have been lost in the morass of runaway-bride stories and other junk. Bloggers and the people who read them are the last redoubt of print journalism -- they like to read, they want to know  where the real stuff is, and they comb through newspaper web sites to get it. Nine times out of ten, when I follow a link to a newspaper story, I end up exploring other stories at the newspaper site.  

The economics have been against newspapers for decades, but the industry's response to the internet has been to take what ought to be premium content -- the local news and regional coverage that should be their bread and butter -- and dump it out there for free. Meanwhile, they've lost their job listings to Craigs List and other services, while their moneymaking classified ads and auto sales ads have gone to other, more efficient operations. The welter of hobby columns, comics, puzzles and other stuff that used to support reader interest in big Sunday papers has also been lost to the Internet.

Every time a newspaper shrank the size of its comics in order to jam more strips onto a single page, it encouraged readers to seek out a more readable version on the Internet. When I read Doonsbury, I do it at Garry Trudeau's site, where it is available in readable form, untroubled by the caprices of editors who got scared because one of the local wingnuts complained about the strip's content.    

Every time a newspaper cut fresh, original content in order to run canned wire copy, it dug its own grave a little deeper. Every time a newspaper laid off employees and required reporters to take on more towns, thus ensuring increasingly shallow and inattentive coverage, it dug its own grave a little deeper. And now the industry finds itself at the bottom of a very deep shaft, with very little daylight visible up top.

It is possible to operate a good newspaper economically, and at a small but steady return. After nearly three decades of dicking around, however, it's may well be too late to go the sensible route.  

And yes, reporters need a fixed place from which to work. About 20 years ago, the weekly chain I worked for was taken over by a new bunch of managers who immediately closed down all the local offices "so we can spend money on real estate." Trouble is, local weeklies need that kind of local visibility to function, and as sales declined, layoffs followed.

This relentless nickel-and-diming of educated professionals carries a long term cost to the operation. The Record will learn that lesson quickly enough.        

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by: Steven Hart @ Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 17:51:54 PM UTC