Where (And When) Does It End?

a really long time. decades. if it happens at all.

 

Then I'm betting on complete collapse and death of the industry (newsprint and newspaper-owned websites included).

 

It ends with most of the major chains declaring bankruptcy to get out from the crushing debt load. How they come out of it, I don't know if newspapers will go back to local ownership or not.

 

I think so. And it needs to not drag on for decades. Let's get bloody now and re-emerge as something that still resembles news. Because if it goes too long, it becomes a much harder fight to become news organizations again as there will no experienced news gatherers left.

 

Mark 2010...i think that's exactly what it is, at least in our case: greed. as i said earlier, we have the best financial track record of the 30 papers in our chain. always, but always show a profit. less than a month ago, my boss boasted about the "really good" financial state of our paper. was all smiles and feeling great. two weeks later, we have a staff meeting that also gave the same report. a week later, two layoffs and major cuts. what pissed everybody in the office and sunk morale lower than a cat's back was having called the freakin' "good news" meeting in the first place and having everybody feeling euphoria. then this.
i am no economics' teacher and have little knowledge of finance, but you can't convince me things suddenly hit rock-bottom to cause such changes. again, i think our boss just doesn't want to be the first publisher at our paper ever to not show a profit. something doesn't totally add with our situation and, as Mark2010 noted, i think some of it is spelled "G-R-E-E-D."

 

sounds like a pretty safe bet. we're almost there and economy has barely begun to tank.

 

Where and when does it end?

Who knows and it probably won't for several years.

Reading threads like this only motivates me more to keep looking for a job out of the profession.

 

Maybe when the Baby Boomer generation disappears into retirement. There was a column Paul Begala wrote a while back that still resonates today, especially now that the nation is enduring its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

http://www.esquire.com/features/worst-generation-0400

Some choice paragraphs to consider:

The excerpt above could easily describe what is going on right now in the U.S. and in the journalism industry. The Boomers have always risked long-term welfare for short-term satisfaction, leaving a path of destruction in their wake. We are now suffering because of it.

 

If you use Begala's date of 1946 being the start of the Baby Boom, the oldest Baby Boomer was 34 when Reagan was elected and 42 when he left office. They were not calling the shots in business or politics, the previous generation was. And it's always been a greedy country.

 

Hippies . .hippies everywhere . . .they say they want to change the world, but all they do is smoke pot and listen to weird music . . . . .



WILL THIS NEVER END?!?!?!!

Answer: it will not, ever, end, until media companies as we know them are dead and staffed by people more interesting in spouting opinion than in news. I know the economy will eventually turn. But I wonder if the robber-barons in charge will leave anything alive for those days.

 

I think it ends pretty quickly, as soon as Gannett (I think they'll be the one) goes all Internet. It'll give everybody the excuse to cut 50 percent of the staffs and try to make it all online. It's obvious this is where we're going; online with 50 percent or less of current staffs.

 

I still believe life goes in cycles. Maybe when the dust clears from this storm, some entrepreneur will start locally-owned newspapers again, in some form. And not be subject to the giant overhead costs that some of these chains have to deal with.