Palm Beach Post

AJC and PBP are the only two Cox newspapers that have made cuts so far, correct?

Would Austin be next?

 

Oh boy - to blame this mess entirely on the head honchos at the PBP is so ridiculous. I'm no apologist, especially at a time like this, and they do shoulder a good part of the blame.

But to be fair, let's look at the track record the sports department has as a whole when it comes to working with the Web. For years that dept has been content to shovel content over to the site with little or no regard about how it looks or if it has any kind of multimedia presentation element. Just look at how pleased they have been to essentially regurgitate special sections onto the web as nothing but text and photos.

As someone who works not too far away from that desk in the building, I'd say they need to get it together and quit running junk like that Hal Habib love letter about Paul Hamm with not so much as a photo online the other week.

Sorry to rant, but in this time of severe change, I worry that there are too many people in that department who refuse to do so or for some reason fear learning about the Web and would rather just plug their ears, run more agate and pretend like people still give a crap about Calder Cup results, insignificant amatuer golf events and the lot.

 

Dayton started the ball rolling several years ago through attrition, major buyouts and consolidation of four copy desks into one universal desk for four dailies.

They appear ahead of the curve.

 

12345, I'd agree. That's part of what I'm saying. I don't think it's just the staffers' fault that the Web has been ignored until fairly recently as the direction things are going. There certainly should have been more of an effort to improve multimedia efforts earlier on, but where does that direction come from? The top. And there didn't seem to be any effort to do that until it was too late.

Also, though, it wasn't a jab just at the Post. I think it's been a problem throughout the industry, generally speaking. It seems no one really knows what way to go, so they either don't do anything or they overreact.

As for the reference to Dayton: I believe that paper did go through many of the same cuts a while back and did so under the stewardship of Doug Franklin, now the publisher of the Post. Writing was probably on the wall back when he came on.

 

If you think that a lack of multi-media elements on the Web led to 33 percent staff cuts, you're a moron.

I mean, sorry to be harsh, but get real. Slightly larger issues are in play.

 

Definitely more issues at play than that, but it's been clear as day to me that the bulk of the sports staff - writers, editors, managers - would have really liked the Web to just go away so they can get back to doing their jobs the way they always have.

 

I know people at the Post (including Web-site honchos who might be your boss) who offer a far different view.

The problem is that the Web team (not Sports) was charged with producing sports on the Web.

Those producers were swamped with helping Metro and other departments. They admitted that they couldn't keep up with demands of covering sports on the Web.

That's not assigning blame. They were overworked and in many cases had little sports knowledge.

So in recent months the sports desk took responsibility for sports production and is doing the job itself while getting further training.

Now, the news judgment shown on the site is better, headlines are improved and occasionally there even are more multi-media elements.

Sports blogs ALWAYS get more hits than the rest of the newsroom combined and sports content often leads the site in hits.

If any of these points are wrong, I'd love to hear it, because my sources are pretty darn good on this.

All that said, this issue has nothing to do with staff cutbacks, the success of the Web site or anything else. The newsroom staff is being cut because of the collapse of real-estate advertising, the loss of classified revenue (just like in the rest of the country) and the fact that the staff was very big to begin with.

 

Wow, Matt - I know people at The Post, too. We should get together sometime and talk about how "occasionally there even are more multi-media elements."

It concerns me to no end that, especially in sports like you said, that we are relying on existing employees with little and in some cases NO background in Web beyond checking their email and the occasional fantasy sports blog to somehow increase the quality level on the site.

How can this industry reinvent itself in a timely fashion if we rely solely on employees who need months of training just to get a basic grasp of how the Web operates?

 

I assume this is epidemic throughout the industry and certainly isn't helping papers transition to the web.

I'll give the papers the benefit of the doubt and assume they didn't want to just fire a whole bunch of people and hire newbies with different skills.

 

Personally, I'd rather rely on journalists learning production skills rather than producers (often just out of college with no journalism experience) trying to learn journalism.

 

A lot of papers have a state of the industry meeting, one of those meetings where they explain the new direction of the paper.
Has anyone ever asked one of the EEs, publishers or EEs how they expect readers to enjoy the product if it has less than the reader is accustomed to?

 

Having web techs putting up content is a mistake papers made in the mid 90s, before most realized you needed aspiring journalists to write headlines and make basic editorial judgments, no matter how much of the job was really coding and FTPing.

I'm surprised the PBP was keeping at that for as long as it did. You can't pin that on the newsroom staff.