Huge shakeup at Newsday

Alan Hahn did a good job with the Isles. Consistently came up with some snappy lines that were good for a laughs.

 

Don't be surprised if Eichenberger is gone in less than a year. Can you imagine working your whole career to be an SE and then finding out you're being demoted to work on the web? (If working on the web can be called a demotion, that is...)

If Newsday revamp their preps coverage online they could win some new readers, they have a pretty good site. But they're also going to alienate people who get a thrill out of seeing their son or daughter's name in the paper and aren't as comfortable with the web.

My guess is like most things that have happened at Newsday the past few years, this will be a flop. How do you put someone who has no experience running a web site in charge of a web site?

P.S. Moving Alan Hahn off the hockey beat is a mistake. He was one of the only guys at that paper who cared about hockey. Greg Logan will probably mail it in.

 

greg logan NEVER mails it in. he's got too much pride.

 

thanks, Greg

 

clever : : :

 

Rumor verified, yet still no internal announcement at Newsday.

This doesn't make sense. Eichenberger is a good person, the section is consistently good, and despite the regular grumblings of journalistic minds, there's not major unrest in the dept. Could it be Eichenberger requested reassignment for reasons which are possibly not anyone's business?

On the other hand, that theory doesn't explain beat changes. And it was only a year or so ago that veteran Newsday employee Steve Ruinsky was promoted from SE to AME sports/business, then unceremoniously axed overnight.

 

Talk about your good news/bad news. Yikes!

 

Maybe I'm missing something, but have they improved the section in any way with all these changes? Not saying there aren't some talented people involved, but they were good where they were.

 

At least for now, the department is in - from all accounts - very capable hands. But with the drastic and ongoing paper-wide changes over the last two years, it's anyone's guess what will happen there next. That's probably true of any paper.

On a loosely related note, from guinnessworldrecords.com:

Longest Surviving Headless Chicken
On September 10, 1945, a Wyandotte chicken belonging to Lloyd Olsen of Fruita, Colorado, USA, had its head chopped off, but went on to survive for 18 months. Mike's owner, Lloyd Olsen of Fruita, Colorada, USA, fed and watered the headless chicken directly into his gullet using an eyedropper. Mike eventually choked to death one night in an Arizona motel.

 

POKES, that's the funniest transition I've read in quite some time. Well done.

 

Actually, it doesn't matter who is in charge of the sports department at Newsday. The suits at the top of the paper dictate everything anyway.

Nice how they took the salary-cap $$$ saved by Jon Heyman's departure and put it in their pockets, a la the Kansas City Royals' revenue-sharing money, instead of improving the section.

 

Revenue sharing is the root of all evils!! ... Much like nature, everything should be survival of the fittest.