Mark Cuban: your saviour?

You know, you don't even have to pre-empt me there.

That post above? One helluva post. You made great points.

 

One beer?
For that post?
You're a cheapskate, 2much.

 

EXCELLENT JOE.
This post says it all. It's true. It is true. All of it. Worded beautifully.
I love the ending. Yes the newsroom leaders have been exposed. And they are hiding for cover behind the economy. I hope your post never gets lost in this thread on Cuban.
YOU SAID IT ALL. Only people who would disagree are the 10 a.m.ers themselves.

 

It won't. Post-of-the-year caliber on that one.

 

I don't know about that. It kind of reminds me of high school coverage. If you're under the gun to report "positive" angles on everything from state championships to 0-1 seasons, you have a problem. If you've avoided that without backlash that has made for negative changes to the way you do business, then it can work.

 

Nice work, Joe.

 

Well written, Joe. I have thought about lousy management a lot over the years -- uh, decades -- I've been at this. I've probably worked for a dozen sports editors and I'd count maybe three I thought were good.
One of the reasons is the lack of training. You go to college and learn to write and maybe edit a little bit. Learn a bit about the history of the biz. You don't learn jack about how to be a manager.
Then you get that first job cranking out high school copy for a few years, then move up to other writing beats, maybe editing and other desk work.
Then all of a sudden, a management position opens and it's the natural step up in your career, but you have no fucking experience at it. Oh, maybe you were city editor or managing editor of the college paper, but that really isn't enough.
Most of what Joe wrote then comes into play.
Thanks for spelling it out so precisely.

 

Perhaps Cuban's idea CAN save newspapers as profitable newsgathering entitites!

Wait, what's that on the horizon?



Well, bollocks.

(Nice post, Joe Williams. It would be interesting to go back and read old posts, watch the board morph from two years ago, when so many didn't want to hear doom and gloom arguments, to today).

 

I was gonna jump on Joe a little bit, because this "all management" sucks sentiment seems to be growing here and, to me, that has been a little unfair.

But two things: 1) He mitigated it a tad, and if Shottie didn't think it was necessary, I still think it made it a little bit MORE fair; 2) As I've noted before, I've been out of the newspaper front lines since 1997, and maybe things on the newspaper management front have gotten worse since I left.

 

Yes, we're such a wiser, richer board now that we've embraced our own mortality. We must be so proud.

 

fetch us a newspaper chain, newbie

 

For better or worse (and I can cite examples of both), writers or copy editors who become editors are often ill-equipped to be managers. It's a huge hole in the industry.