Clarion-Ledger drops Southern Miss beat

This business is wonderful. I'm sure there are brain-dead Gannett suits who get Christmas bonuses that are bigger than most reporters salaries...

 

Those brain-dead suits might just decide that the Southern Miss-Cincinnati PapaJohn's Bowl this week gets staffed by Hattiesburg for both the Jackson and Cincinnati papers. (Watch Brian Kelly go ape again).

 

While I can understand the financial implications with this plan, I don't think this breeds a healthy reporter mentality.
A lot of reporters love the idea of scooping the competition. And right now, Gannett is eliminating the competition and quite possibly the drive to do more when said reporter knows he's the only game in town, IMO.

 

That's one way of looking at it.

On the other hand, some kid – or even a savvy older guy – may decide to get aggressive with a Web site and build a healthy little e-business out of covering the team better than the Gannett paper does.

That's the Chicago way.

 

But they're protecting the 25% profit margin! That's way more important than scoops!

 

that would assume the higher ups and such care about quality

 

i don't know why, but i think this will breed laziness and the reader will suffer. not that management gives a shit.

 

exactly


of course, the people in charge are so fucking stupid they don't care about the product and think nobody else does either, so they continue to cut quality (along with costs) and wonder why people aren't buying the product in record numbers

 

Tim interviewed for a news opening at the HA yesterday, but my gut feeling is he's not going to take it, at least not right away. He's going to take the buyout $$, pay down some bills, sit at the house for a few months and if he wants to get back into the biz, he'll do it then. Trust me, there will still be an opening at the HA six months from now, possibly in sports, certainly in news.

Also, the reason he was let go was economics, and since the HA is 5 minutes from campus, their beat guy stays on and Tim is sent home. Crappy, but that's the nature of the business. Hell, we may all be stocking shelves at Wal-Fart a year from now.

 

Well, Tim lived in Hattiesburg, so I'm not sure how that makes sense, but whatever.

 

Robert Wilson

There were issues at the paper a year or two back, when it was planned by editors or higher-ups to rotate the beats.
The USM guy would now cover Ole Miss, the Ole Miss guy would cover MSU, or some switcharound like that.
One of more of the beat writers pitched a fit about this and I think (key word here - think) that one of the writers was pissed about the planned changes.
All college beat writers, as I understand it, are encouraged to live in the city where their college is located.

Robert, I think, asked to move to another beat, maybe even preps, because he wanted to spend more time with his kids.
Maybe this is incorrect. It's been a long time and things are fuzzy, but there were some C-L issues that were discussed on this board a few years back.