More DMN updates

The simple answer to your question is Yes. I don't know that I'd call myself a complete douche though...perhaps a partial one.

Nevertheless, you further my point with your response...No sir, what shareholders think is that by investing my money in Belo, we are investing with a management team that has vision for earning our investment a profit in the near and long term.

With the understanding that what a shareholder thinks and what you understand are two different things, is bogus. The employees of Belo work for the owners...the shareholders. Shareholders don't invest their money with the idea that they lose first, then recoup that loss (Unless they are shorting the stock, which may be warranted in this case). And right now, senior management is driving Belo and the newspaper into the ground. It's time for change across the board and time for manager to understand they answer to the shareholders.

 

How big is DMN's sports staff? Pre-buyouts, who had a bigger sports staff? Boston?

 

The problem is, you're never going to make the shareholders happy. They're asking for more than they're going to get -- namely, increased profit margin despite decreased product quality. Customers have shown that they're not going to stand for it. Advertisers have shown they're not going to stand for it.

There needs to be a happy medium somewhere in this business. It happens everywhere:

You've got one side -- the shareholders -- who are continuing to try to slash and slash and slash in order to improve profit margin. But the other side -- the product; you know, us; -- knows that if you keep slashing and slashing and slashing, the product is going to decrease in quality, and lower customer satisfaction, thereby hurting profit ...

Just as much as the editorial side does not seem interested in how to improve profit margin, the ownership side does not seem to be interested in improving quality. They both affect each other. ... Neither side is working together. And both sides are losing ...

 

[quote author=gandhithegreat
The simple answer to your question is Yes. I don't know that I'd call myself a complete douche though...perhaps a partial one.
[/quote]

ah c'mon, don't sell yourself short. there's no partial to it, you're a complete douche.

 

Intelligent points, Buckweaver.

Too often newsies either conveniently ignore or are oblivious to the fact that newspapers are capitalist institutions and as such they have to make a profit. There are hundreds of newspapers (look at Toledo and Pittsburgh) whose private owners sustained years of losses rather than make the tough choices until they couldn't do it any more. Ultimately, because they avoided the discipline of the marketplace, their newspapers became fat targets for the likes of the Singletons or the Jelenics, who know exactly what to do with sloppy, inefficient operations and don't care whose lives they destroy to get to 30 percent.

As a reporter or editor, there's not much you can do about stupid owners. But there is something you can do about stupid employees.

 

Before or after they design their pages?

Damn, that was too easy.

 

Anybody who can't "design" (whatever that means) a page in about three minutes ought to go sell shoes.

 

You'd be amazed at how many of them turn it into an all-night job.

And at how many "managing" editors look the other way while it happens.

 

Keith Whitmire has dived into his new beat with much aplomb.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/highschools/topstories/stories/093006dnspopesh.370bb52.html

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/highschools/topstories/stories/092906dnsposidelines.303dd3c.html

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/highschools/football/stories/092606dnspomolina.18f60aa9.html