More “Guest Posts”

Newspapers are dying because of the bean counters who are trying to maximize profits for the owners. What gets cut first from a newspaper operation when trimming costs? Editorial positions, i.e., the people who go out and cover the news.

I saw this happening in the early 1990s when I was let go from my position at an all news radio station. Costs needed to be cut and so they cut me, the boss, because they couldn’t afford me any longer. Since then, that radio station is way down in ratings and advertising revenue.

Tucson has only one daily nupe now. The other folded because of declining revenue. Our only daily leaves a lot to be desired. Editorial positions cut, photog positions cut. And that leaves very few people to cover the events. How does that serve the community? It doesn’t.

Today, newspapers are nothing more than fish-wrappers and they don’t do well at that task either because the ink rubs off on to the fish.

“Katrina Manning.” Sounds like the name of a porn star.

I think you nailed it. A sweatshop trolling sites. The grammatical errors suggest, to me, an Asian speaker with limited English language skills. Probably canned responses to everything.

It’s interesting to note the spelling errors and grammar problems. Seems that would be a problem when writing professionally, wouldn’t it?

Though proof reading and editing seem a thing of the past if you read newspapers and other so called “professional” publications lately. You see so many errors today, that you would have never seen even 20 years ago.

This in spite of things like “spell check” built into every word processor on your computer.

I worked for a weekly about 15 years ago, and that paper still had proofreaders at the time. They would find plenty of errors, and were worth the money, not that they were even paying them all that much. So its not like it was that expensive…..

The problem was they were all semi retired people who came in once a week to proof the paper before it went to pre-press. The youngest was well into her 60’s, and no one was being trained to replace them, like they had in the past. Most were in their 70’s and 80’s, most had retired from full time work with the paper.

It was how they had always done it over the 70 or so years the paper had been around. When you were finished with working full time, you could keep a once a week gig, proof reading. It worked out great for both the paper and the retirees. They had a ball doing the work (you would hear the laughing coming from that room, probably at our expense), could see their former co workers, make a few bucks. The paper got the job done at a decent price, making it look far more professional. Why would you stop?

I think the only reason why we still had them, was that the current (second and third generation) management (owned by a family) were waiting out that older generation. They didn’t want to do the extra work it took to have them around, but also didn’t want the flack they would get, had they just let the proofreaders go.

Frankly the newer family members managers didn’t have any loyalty to employees the older management had. If the older generation was still running the day to day, I probably would still be working there. But since it was the new ones, I got laid off before I was there a year. Some of the proofreaders had been with the paper for decades.

That’s why I always disagree with people that the internet killed newspapers. Even if the internet didn’t exist papers would still be dying. They are being “managed” to death.