Sinking the McClatchy ship

Columbia Journalism Review looked at how the McClatchy papers affected by recent staffing cuts covered their own reductions. An interesting survey, the saddest part is simply that a corporation of such immensity would be forced to go this route.
My favorite part:

But, frankly, all of the reporters who drew this bitch of an assignment deserve some love, because it cannot be easy to report on the disintegration of one’s own newsroom.“As best you can, you try to separate yourself out,” said The Sacramento Bee’s Dale Kasler. “In a strange sort of way, it’s better to cover the story than to just sit around and think about it, like everyone else is doing, and have a rotten day.”

Ugh. Can you imagine. Many of the news staff have brought up the buyout announced yesterday to me. They seem to be working in fear. Two mentioned they are bottom-of-the-totem-pole employees in the newsroom. One quipped, "You might be here longer than me." Oh no. There go my dreams of staying and living a happy life of marriage and backyard gardening.

Guess I'll need to stay mobile, and I'm thinking more and more everyday that I need to start applying for some grants to see if someone will pay me to write my grandfather's life story. That would buy me some time to see what will happen next in this business.

Signs of The Times

If the New York Times is the indicator of the health of our industry, falling ad revenues are sign that the worst is yet to come. No paper is immune to the decline in both readership and economic health the country is experiencing. Just a few years ago, it seemed all people wanted to talk about was how to get more individuals to read the news. Now the Internet has provided us with all the news we can swallow, but the discussion has turned to how to keep the news that is important coming.

A talk at the newspaper I am interning at yesterday announced a buy-out for retirement age workers in an attempt to reduce payroll costs. The paper simply can't sustain the cost to revenue ratio, like many others have already found. It was somewhat surprising to me that this was the first talk that had been given, the first offer to retirement age or almost retirement age employees to leave their posts for sunnier climates.