Op-Ed Sections, Threat or Menace?

This is why I respectfully disagree with the guy (not you, dixie) who comes on the journalism threads and dumps all over newspaper companies who still have a print edition.

The problem with going online only (or with newspapers’ previous efforts to push video, podcasts, etc.) is that consumers have so many options who do those formats so much better. And newspaper owners don’t want to spend a dime training their staff or providing them with equipment to shoot and produce videos better.

Yes, the audience for print has shrunk a great deal. But it’s the only thing that makes us newspapers different from everything else. Probably wishful thinking on my part, but maybe someday that will be embraced as a strength.

 

Nostalgia is not a business model.

 

It’s worked for vinyl records and books.

A solid, locally focused weekly newspaper or high-quality Sunday print edition can still be viable in 2024. Just my opinion.

 

It's working in my green acres of fly-over country.

 

I remember in my former Gannett life, when the decision was made that we would all become multi-media journalists, given iPhones and put videos with every story.

During our video training, our photo editor stopped everything and said, "How are we going to be shooting videos on our iPhones and compete with TV stations with their state-of-the-art cameras and editing equipment, and decades of experience? Why don't we lean into what we're elite at and not fight a losing battle on the video front?"

Crickets ... until the photo editor was laid off a couple of months later.

By that time, the "video will save the industry!" mantra was forgotten, to be replaced by "Facebook and Twitter will save the industry!" Funny how "investing in our product will save the industry!" was never a thing.

 

MoJos! Those were the days.

I remember at my Gannett paper, we had a series of Very Important Meetings where they extolled the virtues of MoJos and said that we all were going to get cameras and computers and working out of our cars. There were jokes made with the senior copy editor, a 40-something year veteran of the paper, was going to become a MoJo. Turned out, he accepted a buyout a short while later, and the paper ended up hiring one young journalist out of a local college to be the only MoJo.

 

So … is Green Acres the place to be?

I remember the era when Pinterest was going to save the industry. That was a long 15 minutes.

 

Pinterest. Fuck.

 

I'm always interested in a pint or two.