Bill Conlin on the business

I think you are missing the point. Conlin is talking about the way the business used to be. And there is no one out here at present who has the prose that Jimmy Cannon, Jim Murray and Red Smith commanded at a moment's notice.

 

Joe Posnanski does. Mitch Albom does (... cringing, but it's true). Bob Ryan does (or did).

 

Nonsense.

BTW, a lot of what Jimmy Cannon wrote would get laughed at today. Times change.

 

What's the over-under on how many more days this guy has before getting shit-canned?

 

Romanticized bullshit. I see this on fan boards all the time. "The sports writing business has gone downhill since the days of guys like Grantland Rice!" There was some great stuff back in the day. And there was also some absolute garbage.

 

And as Smasher pointed out, Jimmy Cannon wrote a little of both.

 

And, frankly, Red Smith never did much for me. Swell fella, I hear, but the columns? Never saw it.

 

I've spent the last 18 months inside The Washington Post. I have been in the pall that hangs over the business; it exists even at that level, or maybe especially at that level where careers decades in the making are at stake. If a 25 yr old asked me, "Should I go into journalism," I'd say, "Not in a million years." If he took that advice, good for him. If he persisted -- not in some vainglorious "triumph of character," but because he loved the work -- then I'd tell him it's going to be hard, it'll make you cry, you better be married well, but if you're good and you work your ass off, there's going to be a job somewhere. Newsprint may be dead. News is forever.

And I might argue that there are more ways to get to the highest levels of the news game now than there ever were in the "traditional route." In my reporting at Washingtonpost.com, I saw dozens of young journalists, most of them younger than my newest tie, doing jobs that didn't exist five minutes ago, let alone in the Pleistocene years of my beginnings. As Waylon says, "open yourself up to opportunities." Look, I wasn't born writing columns. I did the thousand arm-pit photos at high school basketball games, developed 'em, printed 'em, laid out the pages. I used a whip and chair on 20 part-timers who couldn't add fg's and ft's. I laid out front pages, covered murders, wrote weddings, did the freakin' bowling column. Who knew where it was going? I just loved doing it. The equivalent today is video, audio, web design, page design, blogging, making yourself a pest by asking to do work that you have no idea why you want to do it except it has always been true, and will remain true, that your boss likes to see you at work.

 

I beg to differ. Cannon was not only a good writer. He was a good reporter. He never had to "hunt down" a story. The stories came to him. That's clout.
Yes those days are gone and the memories remaing, but I heartily stand by my statement that there isn't anyone out here now with the prose and wit of those three.

 

Are you saying that the number of journalists employed by the Washington Post, print and dot.com, is greater than what it was in print alone during your prime there? Or have a lot of veterans been shed or not replaced, while the new-fangled jobs were created? I doubt there are many places where there has been a net gain of any significance, if at all.

Also, it's worth noting that your 28-year-old page-designing wunderkind didn't start out wanting to design. He shifted to that but he quite possibly started out wanting to write. Guess he didn't want that bad enough.

 

Speaking of which:

WP publisher: "We must make fundamental changes to our business culture"

http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/1208/Weymouth_WaPo_must_be_the_indispensable_guide_to_Washington.html?showall

"We must focus better on what the consumer indicates they want, and be less quick to emphasize only what we think is important," writes Katharine Weymouth in a staff memo. "We must create a nimble, high-performance culture. And we must realign our cost structure to match this strategy. This realignment of our cost structure must be fast. The decline in our revenue base, particularly in classified advertising, requires decisive action."

Pray to God they all want it the most.

 

they love that word ... nimble