At the L.A. Times, It’s Quantity vs. (Low) Quality
According to Mark Lacter at L.A. Observed, Tribune bigwigs Sam Zell and Randy Michaels have announced that the L.A. Times and other Tribune papers are planning to cut reporters who don’t produce a lot of copy:
Besides fewer pages, look for a smaller newsroom. Michaels says that the average Times “journalist” writes the equivalent of 51 pages a year, while the average output in Hartford and Baltimore is around 300 pages. “You can eliminate a fair number of people while eliminating not much content,” he said. He kept calling it the “right-sizing” of the newsrooms and promised “this is going to happen quickly.”
Kevin Roderick doesn’t like it:
Ugh. Zell and Michaels seem to think that covering the world, Washington and in-depth investigations should take no more time and resources than the crap their other papers churn out. It doesn’t work that way.
No, it doesn’t. The crap the L.A. Times churns out takes way more time and resources than the crap the other papers churn out.
Take Pulitzer Prize winner Chuck Philips. He published 12 articles in 2005, 11 articles in 2006, 17 articles in 2007, and just three articles so far in 2008.
That’s 43 articles in 41 months — barely over an article a month. More than a third were co-written with other reporters. That leaves plenty of time to do that in-depth investigative reporting Roderick speaks of.
Except, of course, one of Philips’s three 2008 articles had to be retracted — because it was bogus and based on phony documents.
Maybe Zell and Michaels are thinking: as long as we’re getting crap anyway, let’s at least get more of it!
Poor reporting and lying to the people doesn’t come from human nature. It is taught in whatever failed liberal colleges and by ‘failed professors’ who have never really did the job, but think ‘in their own mind’ they are the experts.
Scrapiron (c36902) — 6/8/2008 @ 9:59 amthere is something fundamentally disingenuous about the term “right-sizing”, and i don’t trust the people who use it.
assistant devil's advocate (46360c) — 6/8/2008 @ 10:07 am“Maybe Zell and Michaels are thinking: as long as we’re getting crap anyway, let’s at least get more of it!”
I think some of their liberal reporters are just constipated. It takes time to squeeze that crap out when you’re like that.
daleyrocks (d9ec17) — 6/8/2008 @ 10:19 amNew motto for the Deadwood Media.
“What we lack in substance, we make up in volume!”
Hey as long as they are going to fake that their editorials are actually news…at least make them work for and dig for …the phony facts they are going to spin at us anyway.
I kind of like the idea of making these prima donna fabricators actually dig for facts. In that way, when they get caught in the lie yet again…you can’t blame the source and fact checkers. It even might have the slimmest, most infinitesmal chance at making reporters hesitant to print leftist lies all day, every day.
If you have mix the oils AND buy the canvas…and THEN sign the painting…maybe, just maybe..one or two of them might grow a conscience.
cfbleachers (4040c7) — 6/8/2008 @ 10:26 amOr maybe if they write faster they will write less crap, and produce an actual “news”paper, not a propaganda sheet!
Patricia (f56a97) — 6/9/2008 @ 7:26 pm