Patterico's Pontifications

2/26/2009

And Another One Comes, And Another One Comes . . .

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:01 pm



The Rocky Mountain News bites the dust.

P.S. I will occasionally point out when I post something in the evening that I put up on Twitter at lunchtime. This is one of those times.

35 Responses to “And Another One Comes, And Another One Comes . . .”

  1. Showoff!

    AD - RtR/OS (cd7b06)

  2. If there are any employees of the Rocky what are reading this I just want to say it sucks to be you.

    happyfeet (bf7f5a)

  3. Too bad. The “Rocky” was the more center of the two Denver dailys. But it’s not surprising – while it claimed it’s coverage more state-wide, for the past decade (or two) it had become as myopically focused on front range issues (Denver, Boulder, and to a much lesser extent, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, & Fort Collins) as Denver’s broadsheet (the very liberal Denver Post).

    As a resident of Colorado since 1980, I’ll miss some of the Rocky’s features. I read it daily when bequeathed my first degree. Only occasionally when I earned my second. But since I haven’t subscribed to a daily paper since 1998, I certainly understand why the Rocky Mountain News folded. Pity the Post didn’t fold first.

    bains (c560fe)

  4. oh. Alls I know is they endorsed this dirty socialist pinhead who is going to have nice green jobs for them all very very soon. A plethora I think you call it.

    happyfeet (bf7f5a)

  5. You know, I like Linda Seebach. I don’t know if she got hired by the Denver Post, but I hope she comes out of this OK.

    Patterico (cc3b34)

  6. oh. You talked to Linda Seebach before. brb.

    okay it was here.

    happyfeet (bf7f5a)

  7. feets!

    Karl (8966b4)

  8. BTW, did I hear everyone say “Amen?”

    Karl (8966b4)

  9. As an out-of-towner, I came to respect the RMN immensely for its amazing Final Salute series:
    http://www.rockymountainnews.com/special-reports/final-salute/

    One of the best pieces of written and photojournalism to come out in the last decade. The RMN was a fine paper and it’s sad to see it go.

    Adam (dbfcb4)

  10. Once again, I mourn the loss of another newspaper.

    My sorrow is not simply because I have strong ties to the industry. It’s also because newspapers represent a great American tradition.

    However, the industry’s leadership could never see beyond its established hubris. You know what, it wasn’t the leadership. It was the employees. And I know this for fact: We were the young mavericks who would take it to the man and everything we wrote had to be another “All the President’s Men,” when, sometimes, what we should have written was what happened at the city council meeting last Thursday. We were always right and the reader be damned.

    The leadership — executive management — listened to the “Masters of the Universe,” when they should have listened to their consumers.

    And, when the time came, they couldn’t prepare for or meet the new media.

    I predict the same will happen for network news and news magazines. Actually, we’re already seeing it with Newsweek. And network news is a travesty.

    However, I have hope for the new journalists with a caveat: Don’t take the truth for granted.

    Ag80 (3e2c59)

  11. Hi Karl! You haven’t been posting much lately and the president person has so many ill-considered notions I can’t keep up all by myself.

    happyfeet (bf7f5a)

  12. I don’t mourn.

    I eagerly anticipate the next, and the next.

    Evil Pundit (43faaa)

  13. “I could have better lost a better man.”

    Like Bains, I’m sorry it was the Rocky and not the Post. It was foreseeable, but on the other hand, I was never worried enough about it to let either of them into the house. Ladies and gentlemen, you entered the field “to make a difference.” You made it. Have a nice life.

    Simon Kenton (19874b)

  14. Thank you kindly, but I retired from the Rocky in 2007 (age 67 and with pesky health problems; nothing to do with the paper’s finances). I agree with the Rocky reporter who said to the local alt-weekly, “Why does Scripps always blink first?”

    The Denver Post’s owner, MediaNews, is worse off than Scripps. Would they had collapsed first.

    The Post picked up a handful of people from the Rocky, including my superb editor Vincent Carroll. Lucky them.

    linda seebach (6290d5)

  15. Denver was a two-newspaper town, and now the Denver Post will have a monopoly. One would think that our honorable President and the Democrats in Congress would want to pass a quick bailout of the RMN.

    Still, the question arises: what happens when the newspaper in a one newspaper town goes belly-up.

    The Dana running short on adjectives this morning (3e4784)

  16. Although it is satisfying on one level to see newspapers going under due to slant and mismanagement it is troubling in that as the Obama policies and initiatives take root even less people will be aware of what is going on.

    voiceofreason2 (590c85)

  17. Ag80 — as in Texas A&M Class of ’80?

    Diffus (cb9f4f)

  18. VOR2
    I expect the vacuum left by newspapers will be filled by online media. In my town, we have Voice of San Diego, a non-profit outfit that is supported by philanthropists who wanted better local government news coverage than the traditional media provided.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (0ea407)

  19. Bradley,
    I think you are right but the damage may be long done before the online presence is significant enough that the majority of citizens are getting the information. For many it is not a matter of being unconcerned but more a matter of not having the time to “look” for sources. The future will probably be a more customized news feed for which one pays a subscription to have their favorite sources and columnists pushed to them.

    voiceofreason2 (10af7e)

  20. VOR2,
    I share your concerns, but expect the doughty blogger Patterico and his ilk will help fill the gap. And they do this for free!

    That free model is what general circulation newspapers must emulate. Specialty sites that provide deep expertise can get away with charging. But sad to say, as an MSM journalist myself, most newspapers don’t provide deep expertise. They are dumbed down for the lowest common denominator, and have less-than-stellar reputations for accuracy and fairness. You wouldn’t know this from the hordes of journalists with arms wrenched out of their sockets from patting themselves on the back about their vital role in democracy, etc. Barf.

    Newspapers simply need to learn to put the Web first, in reporting and advertising. It is extremely difficult for them because making the transition costs money, and they are cash-poor. In the 80s, a company like Gannett could invest millions in a new concept like USA Today, because it had vast resources and patience. Today those attributes aren’t found in news organizations.

    So it may well be that newspapers disappear quicker than otherwise would be the case, because purely online news organizations will outcompete them. The Web-only news sources don’t have the handicap of serving two masters.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (0ea407)

  21. Newspapers (actually, most MSM sources of any medium) would do a lot better if their headlines and articles didn’t automatically become more accurate whenever you substituted the word “despite” for “because”… or vice-versa.

    I used to get the paper every day and decided that it just wasn’t worth it anymore. I changed to only getting the Sunday paper because my wife likes the coupons. The paper called and ended up adding the Friday and Saturday editions for free, even though I didn’t ask for them. I finally got tired of even the Sunday paper and I canceled my subscription completely. I immediately got a ton of phone calls with “special deals” if only I would return, but no sale. The strange thing is, I still get the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday papers despite calling every so often to remind them that I canceled. Their response? “That’s ok, we know.”

    Why would they do that?

    Stashiu3 (460dc1)

  22. #20 Stashiu3:

    Why would they do that?

    To keep up the circulation numbers, which is how they pitch for ad revenue.

    EW1(SG) (e27928)

  23. To keep up the circulation numbers, which is how they pitch for ad revenue.
    Comment by EW1(SG) — 2/27/2009 @ 7:48 am

    I meant to put a little smiley-wink ( 😉 ) at the end there. You’re right of course (as usual). 🙂

    Stashiu3 (460dc1)

  24. Stashiu3,
    Headlines are arguably the single most important part of a story, yet they get the least attention. Here is some journo-geek stuff about headlines:

    Usually, heds (as we spel them) are not written by the reporter, but by a copy editor. That copy editor may or may not understand the story, which may hinge on details such as legal knowledge the copy editor is not likely to have. So even if the reporter gets it right, the copy editor may not have a clue about the nuances and write a hed that’s not quite accurate.

    At our newspaper, reporters are told to write their own heds, a good practice. Even if the hed doesn’t work, it’s a guideline for the copy editors. And it helps reporters to summarize the nub of the story, a good writing tool.

    A few words about copy editors: At most newspapers, they not only read stories, but paginate. Since these are unrelated functions, a whiz at pagination is not necessarily a whiz at accurate headline writing. There are a few exceptions I’ve known who are great at both. And there is one copy editor I know who can’t paginate, but is retained because his editing is superb.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (0ea407)

  25. Believe or not, this is how change actually works it magic. Vacuum…meet the new entrepreneurs. Conquering the ordinary challenges would be the easy part, that is compared to the maddening, suffocating govt bureaucrats that will be the Wall.

    America used to be all about starting new things, and letting go of what wasn’t getting it done any longer. Now it’s all about keeping the old ways patched together even in the face of obvious obsolescence. Over-leveraged banks, depression era govt agencies, bloated bureaucracies from tiny townships to the Big Top, outmoded industries, rant, rant, rant. But it is rather disconcerting to see the progressives holding a death grip on the old ways, while the supposedly conservative voices are screaming for a takedown.

    Step back, unfetter the entrepreneurs, and let them go to it. In the news world and everywhere. It’s going to happen sooner or later. Why not cut this movie down to just those quick clips of the inept neighborhood kids turning into a slick Little League juggernaut? Fast forward the nation’s writedowns, collapses, and get this phoenix out of the ashes.

    Jimmy Stewart looks at the last cartridge, slams it in the breech, the survivors hanging onto the Frankenstein of a plane wing hold their collective breaths…

    Wha…? God, I must have dozed off. Nice dream though.

    allan (42b686)

  26. Thanks Brother Bradley,

    I sort of knew some of that which is why I separated headlines and articles, but I didn’t know the details you gave. Very interesting and makes me wonder how often a political bias influences where an article is cut “below-the-fold”. It seems instead of two possible sources to contaminate what should be an impartial story (reporter and editor), a partisan paginator has at least some opportunity to slant the story as well by burying more-balanced information. Something else to consider I guess.

    Thank you again, good stuff.

    Stashiu3 (460dc1)

  27. I can’t speak to today’s technology, but I was both a reporter and a copy editor/layout editor in the 80s. The paginator is concerned with the graphic appeal of the page. He or she probably doesn’t take the content of the articles into consideration much, if at all, when making his or her decisions.

    If there’s any attempt to bury information by placing it below the fold, those efforts are much more likely to be made by the writers and the copy editors who decide what’s important and where it goes in the story.

    Diffus (cb9f4f)

  28. Diffus is right that biases related to the the pagination of the story (which is really an issue of the “jump,” as opposed to above or below the fold) probably fall more with the writers and copy editors. It’s a function of the “inverted pyramid” style of reporting taught in j-school, which is supposed to put the most important info up top, but which a biased reporter can try to bury in the depths of a piece.

    Karl (e59f40)

  29. Comment by Diffus

    Ag80 — as in Texas A&M Class of ‘80?

    That would be correct.

    Ag80 (3e2c59)

  30. Me, too. Were you a JOUR major? If so, we probably know each other.

    Diffus (cb9f4f)

  31. Yes, I was a JOUR major and I worked on The Battalion.

    Ag80 (3e2c59)

  32. We definitely know each other. I was editor in ’80-’81. E-mail me diffus-at-sbcglobal.net if you wish.

    Diffus (cb9f4f)

  33. If there’s any attempt to bury information by placing it below the fold, those efforts are much more likely to be made by the writers and the copy editors who decide what’s important and where it goes in the story.

    Don’t forget the section editor, who has ultimate authority over the copy editors and lowly scribes such as yours truly. If biased or inaccurate reporting gets into the paper, it’s editor-blessed bias and inaccuracy. Or, as a venerable former editor of mine likes to say, “reporters don’t put stories in the paper. Editors put stories in the paper.”

    And as far as where the jump begins, that is totally beyond the control of a mere reporter. Of course, if the reporter puts any inconvenient truths toward the bottom of the article, it will be in the jump.

    That being said, I really don’t think most of these objectionable jumps are deliberately made, even at the LA Times. I think the bias is mostly unconscious. It’s part of the air they breathe, and they honestly think they’re being fair and balanced.

    Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (who still wants DRJ back) (a18ddc)

  34. It is nice to know that Linda Seebach was not adversely affected directly by the closing of the Rocky because she’s a great person. Its been my pleasure to speak to her at several Rocky Mountain Blogger Bashes.

    SPQR (72771e)

  35. Back to the topic: Never underestimate the power of sheer Luddite obtuseness in newspaper troubles:

    For example, if Google pays the Associated Press for their content, at the very least, shouldn’t they be paying newspapers licensing fees as well?

    If not, well, I say sue, sue, SUE!

    Even faced with extinction, they still don’t understand Google is doing them a favor.

    Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (who still wants DRJ back) (a18ddc)


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