Beware, Trentonian offering jobs that don't exist

frank - thanks, that was a good read ... enjoyed the alternate perspective.

so, i gotta know, what did the ol' man think of you going to the news side?



and oh yeah, jrc sucks bull nuts. <just to stay on topic>

 

He said, "Why don't you choose something where you can make decent money? Don't be an idiot."

But when I landed my first job on a metro, he was proud.

 

I also found Frank's thoughts on the topic to be an interesting read. I continue to disagree with the circ totals but am glad to hear Frank's views.

Reasons To Not Work For JRC​

Reason No. 2: A reporter was suspended for 3 days without pay for typing the wrong first name of a back-up player for a visiting collegiate team in a 400 word preview capsule. Translation: Bob's morning coffee was served without cream because his coffee servant was distracted by the HUGE mistake. The back-up player, as luck should have it, was the son of the coffee servant's butcher's neighbor's third-cousin-twice-removed.

 

Frank addressed how advertisers target potential customers, and I didn't (didn't think of it, sorry), and I'm glad he did. I also enjoyed reading his take. Problem is, circ numbers don't give the whole picture anymore, and the industry is still too dependent on them.

 

That's why NAA wants papers to stress readership over paid circ, but do major advertisers really care about reaching people who are too cheap to buy a newspaper and borrow one from somebody else? This is why I believe that the audience will move to the Net long before the money follows -- there is still a perception that paid circulation is more valuable to advertisers.

 

Most newspaper Web sites are terrible; if people want breaking news they go to CNN or Drudge or ESPN or something. And newspapers haven't figured out how to make money off their Web sites anyway.

 

News doesn't break where you live, PHINJ?

 

Exactly, MMSW. If it's national news, I'll go to CNN.com or Boston.com -- it provides a lot cleaner design than CNN (especially for our 12-year-old Macs in the office). If it's news from an area with which I'm familiar, I'll go to the local Web site, even if it's a story that's made the national wires.

 

I think the point that PHINJ was making was that some newspaper websites haven't caught onto the concept of updating the site with breaking local news. If something major broke in the Trenton,NJ area for instance, the Trentonian's website wouldn't be updated for the breaking news and The Times' portion of the nj.com website might be updated with a paragraph, if they got cooperation from the nj.com webmasters.
In terms of breaking news, aren't most newspaper reporters - no matter the region - more focused on gathering the facts and writing the story for the next day's newspaper instead of taking breaks from gathering the facts to write updated stories for the website?

 

At my last reporting stop, we always called in a decent number of details to the desk for breaking news to be put up, then I wrote a second-day story for the next day's paper.

 

Good point.. forgot about that possibility. Then again, having very little experience on the news desk, I likely spoke out of turn.

 

Not necessarily, Joe. We were an afternoon paper, and no one could figure out what we wanted to be. Some observers who read the POS Rag would understand where I was coming from. I just tried to serve both masters, when possible.