Newsday eliminates Powell, Howard

He's obviously the third columnist they're letting go.

 

Whoa! All told it'll be 100 jobs in the whole place, <a href="http://gawker.com/5102726/100-layoffs-at-newsday">Gawker is saying</a>. This is truly nutty. I had an opportunity to jump from my current place to Newsday a while back and turned it down. Looks like I made the right choice.

 

The way to increase profitability is to give people less of your product.
I don't know what we'd all do without people with MBA's, I truly don't.

 

Those were going to be spread out across all the SI titles - Kids, etc. - last I heard. I haven't heard of anything other than McCallum leaving. There was a big editor's note on a story he did for this week's issue on the Special Olympics, but no mention that he'll be leaving.

 

This is just so bizarre. Aren't columnists -- especially in NYC -- the public, marketable portion of the printed product? Seems to me these are the last positions you'd cut. The memo suggests that there will no longer be any sports columnists at Newsday. Opinion is unique content -- particularly when the reader is familiar with the columnist's style, viewpoint, etc.

 

It's amazing that Newsday has been able to hold on as long as it has, in spite of those three excellent sports columnists. Maybe its their Long Island readership, I don't know. But I do know that these days the NYC tabloid market is just too small to sustain three newspapers. Getting rid of the quality writers that make your product stand apart is even dumber, IMO.

 

You forgot charging more for it at the same time.

 

I could see where publishers might wonder why they are paying sports columnists $200,000 apiece. After all, the market has certainly changed. Not saying I like it, but I could understand it.

I wonder if there's any plan to hire new columnists at much lower salaries. I also wonder if columnists like Powell and Howard had the chance to stay at reduced salaries in the same jobs.

 

I've long thought Shaun Powell was on the short list of most underrated columnists in the country. Doesn't write to shock or push people's buttons. Just does intelligent, readable columns time after time.

 

Even Yahoo! and ESPN are watching their budgets these days, but you would think either would love to get Powell.

 

I've heard that it's less grim than orginally reported, that there are some wrinkles in the "eliminates sports columnists" part of this, but I'd rather somebody with much more sound first-hand knowledge of this post it here than me.

 

Seems like the next evolution would be beat writers who can/do write opinion pieces as well as cover the team.