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

As long as you have umpty million degenerate gamblers in NYC, college hoops shouldn't be that low on the totem pole.

 

Dickie started there a few months before I did, and I took his arrival from Philly as a sign that the paper probably was not going to fold after having been in bankruptcy. As noted by others, a good guy.

 

Dick leaving Philly was a shocker but a no brainer decision. Philly hasn't been the same since. I don't think he's coming back to the City of Brotherly Love but you never know. Hey, I never thought he'd become a layoff victim.
Same goes with Tim Smith, one of the best people you'd ever want to meet. A professional in every sense of the word. His work on the NFL and boxing beats were legendary.

 

I know both Tim and Dick, and it is a shame they are leaving. But the fact of the matter is that their departures won't materially affect the Daily News as a business. They will be missed by professionals like us, but the average reader doesn't care so much these days about quality. The Daily News will cover pro football, boxing and college basketball with less expensive alternatives to Dick and Tim and life will go on. Just the way it is these days in newspapers.

 

"The public doesn't care" is a failure mantra. The public damn well does care what it gets for its money. What business except politics operates on the premise "they'll take what we give them and like it"?

 

In my last couple of years in South Florida, the new Senior Vice President in charge of the two Florida papers kept repeating this sad mantra every time someone complained about us dropping this feature or that coverage:

"It doesn't move the needle."

Practically any cut could be rationalized because, in a vacuum, it didn't move the needle WRT circulation or page hits or increased revenue.

Meanwhile, when I would attend some festival or event where there was a vendor selling subscriptions to my paper, would-be customers would simply tell the vendor, "There's nothing in here anymore."

 

I stand by my assertion that the public doesn't care as much about quality as it once did -- especially in sports journalism. Sports sites like Bleacher Report and SB Nation, which at their start were really looked down upon by many people on this site, are now attracting millions of unique visitors a month. They have proven that there is a market for their brand of sports content, even if the journalism does not approach New York Times or New York Daily News quality.

I mean, even daily newspapers are starting to publish Bleacher Report's stuff now. It's a cruel development, to be sure, but the Daily News can replace Dick and Tim with Bleacher Report-caliber bloggers and not see their business be materially affected.

 

The last 10 years of newspaper history proves this is not true. Papers have shed talent for cheaper options for a decade, and all that happens is that fewer people are willing to pay for what they damn well know is a lessened product. Bleacher Report and SB Nation attract audiences because of the provocative (for lack of a better word) nature of their content. It isn't the same thing as what the Daily News brand is supposed to mean, strike that, DOES mean to its customers.
Take your argument to its ultimate extension, Cigar. People don't care what's in the paper as long as it says "sports." People don't care about quality. Ergo, people are pretty stupid, so why should we try to do anything but appeal to the lowest common denominator as cheaply as we can? That's not an attractive message for either readers or advertisers, and don't think for a moment both groups don't get the message.

 

I'm always surprised at reporters and editors who say or assume the public is "stupid." Those newsroom types are the ones with the "lowest common denominator" mind-set, and it shows.

Much of the public is smart. Informed readers spot errors quickly, they get bored with lousy writing and lazy content development, and they know when they're getting ripped off by their newspaper.

 

The posts on this thread lead me to say what I've said before and will continue to say:

When newspapers are dead and buried, the writing on the tombstone will say "Who killed newspapers? Newspapers killed newspapers."

 

There is a market for shitty content, but that does not mean all readers don't care.

 

If

If the only alternative is shit to read, the public has no choice but to take it. Yes, it's sad that vets are being shown the door and its even sadder that the quality of work has reached an all-time low. There seems to be no bottom in this madness.