Dick "Hoops" Weiss among layoff victims at New York Daily News

Well, so you say.

 

Met him at the preseason NIT over a decade ago, he was familiar with my work, even referencing a feature I had written, which had me floored. Then, the friend who introduced me said, "He's familiar with everybody's work, don't be too flattered..."

Incredibly nice guy.

I always get sick when I hear of anyone getting the axe, this one is particularly tough to stomach because it's yet another reminder that almost nobody is safe.

 

This. We cut our throats, and then start asking for ideas about how to stop the bleeding.

 

Learned everything I know about college basketball from reading the man. When I got to meet him and be around him a bit, I learned that he has more class than most anyone I've met who has put fingers to keyboard. This is a temporary setback.

 

1. It's a newspaper.
2. Weiss probably is making twice as much as an entry-level reporter.
3. He covers a low-value sport for the Daily News.
4. It's tough to imagine his stories stacking up Web hits.
5. It's a newspaper.

What's so damn surprising?

Not one word of this post is a knock on Weiss, who I've read occasionally for years and still has a lot left in his tank. He will be fine. He will find someone to let him write about college basketball as often or seldom as he likes. He will cover the Final Four if he so chooses. He assumedly received a severance package for his hard work.

But the layoff was not surprising.

 

Also shown the door at the Daily News is veteran columnist Tim Smith. With his departure, there are no Black sportswriters on the staff. A disgrace.

 

No, it's not surprising that newspapers are poorly managed. It's still enough to make me mad, though. As for Web hits, that's among the stupidest means of measuring an individual reporter's effectiveness as can be. Cute animal pictures pile up Web hits. The question for profitability is "what's the nature of the audience hitting this particular story?" A smaller audience with a higher level of commitment to subject matter is of more value to advertisers -- not that there's any way to make money from Internet advertising.
Firing higher-paid employees to save money is a time-honored bad management tactic. Presumably, they got the money in the first place because said management thought their work was of value to the company.
I continue to be amazed at the people on this board, not to single you out here, Versatile, who simply accept the business practices that are killing your business.
Final part of rant: This weekend, we had some friends over for dinner. One of them does well in finance. He posed to me the question "Do newspapers DESERVE to survive?" I didn't come up with a very good answer.

PS: Tim Smith? Really, just let the fucking Daily News die. Let it come down to Mort Zuckerman shooting his mouth off on TV and Mike Lupica writing columns from Connecticut.

 

I agree.

 

Terrible news about Weiss and Smith. Few reporters on any sports beat were as prolific and connected as Hoops. Just saw him the other day at the College Football Hall of Fame, which honored him. As for Tim, I worked with him at The Times in the 1990s and competed with him when he went to the Daily News after that. Hard worker, always on the scene. Personnel moves like this, involving veterans with high salaries, prompted me to take the buyout at The Times in 2010. It was generous and it felt like the right move. I've taught a lot of journalism classes since then, taken my students to NFL and NBA games to give them a taste of The Show. If Tim was ever around those events, he'd come by, sit with the students, answer their questions and encourage them. I hate to make this sound like an obit -- both guys are alive and well -- but this is portenteous and not in a good way. :'(

 

I'd like to think he'll be writing for Yahoo by Monday.

 

What a fucking post. That's like hearing that someone died and instead of offering condolences or sharing a favorite memory saying, "Well, hell, he had cancer. That's usually bad. I'm not really surprised."

It's not about being <b>surprised,</b> it's about feeling bad that a guy who worked hard and treated people well gets shown the door for no reason other than they've decided that's the way to juggle the numbers.

It sucks for Dick Weiss, and it sucks for this business. People want to vent, they don't want to see the anatomy of how or why it happened.

 

I understand that, but it shouldn't be a bad thing to offer some perspective.

I've been there and getting laid off sucks. A TON. But I join Versatile in being surprised not that Weiss was laid off, but that he survived until May 2013 as a national college reporter at the New York Daily News.

Does that make it suck less? Absolutely not. What DOES make it suck less is that unlike many other laid-off employees (in our industry and others), Weiss *should* have plentiful job opportunities, perhaps for a site or publication in which he would not be covering the 18th most important beat.