Black Friday at the Daily News
Friendly Fire readers will surely have noticed in recent days that the postings have been light. There's a very good reason for this. Or, rather, a very bad one. The staff of the Daily News was reduced about 20 percent over the last two days due to the every-crapifying state of corporate print journalism in the United States. We've all been dealing with the loss of good friends and talented journalists, all while wondering if we were the next to be called into the editor's office for the last talk.
This blog was lucky enough only to suffer one casualty. Mike Tetreault, the acerbic and saucy letters editor who had been practicing particularly fine journalism at the Daily News for nearly 25 years. He and 21 other people found their Daily News careers over yesterday and today. Needless to say, those of us remaining have been in shock or scrambling to figure out how to deal with the absences -- both emotionally and workload wise.
It's a dark time for American journalism that appears to be darkening ever still. The Daily News wasn't the only newsroom to get bad news this week; across California the many MediaNews papers have let people got and will continue to do so through next week. And papers across the country such as NYT, the Boston Globe and Newsday are cutting staffs. The LA Times is conducting buyouts through this week and will then move to layoffs.
Where we will be in a a few months no one can say. But please bare with us as we absorb this shock.
Please clarify something. Is the cut down of personal at the Daily News caused by technology advances (as a manual typewrityer replaced by a computer), or is due to save a couple of bucks as: The deleted jobs went to India, Pakistan, China, etc., etc, etc.?
No, the Glendale beat (we'll miss you, A-Dob!!) was not outsourced to Pakistan. The cutbacks were to stem the bleeding from revenue loss.
Sorry to hear the axe fell on the DN newsroom. I suppose my question is: how does the DN plan to deal with the resulting fallout?
I was out in California recently and picked up the DN regularly. I was stunned to see this paper, which if I recall has a circulation of like 250,000, was filled to the brim with wire copy. I can only assume this is due to a general shortage of bodies in the newsroom. But now that you have even fewer people to man the ship, will the paper rely ever more on wire copy -- copy people can get for free, on the Internet, from any place they choose?
Accordingly, does the DN have a plan for boosting its local news coverage -- the stuff people theoretically buy the paper to read? It seems to me this is the only way to get out of the Grand Death Spiral in which newspapers find themselves.
I wouldn't expect that you'll see a great difference in the amount of local news coverage, as the cuts did not impact the number of reporters greatly. As all news organizations have to do nowadays, though, we have to assess how to best use those bodies to respond to the needs of the readers and community. Forums like the DN blogs -- which are a relatively new addition -- have been invaluable in getting direct feedback and charting our future course.
In some ways, we're relying more on homegrown copy than in the past. A good example would be page 2, which used to be mostly wire copy filling the News Lite page. Now it's original columns and interviews from our Hollywood biz guru Greg Hernandez.
You have an excellent point about people wanting to pick up their papers for the community news. We definitely aren't the only paper weighing how to best use our available resources to fill the available news hole, looking for ways to increase revenue and embrace new technologies without losing touch with the community. It's not always the easiest job, but I have faith our staff can step up to the challenge.
Here I am dating back to pre-WWII and have a "hard" habit of reading the paper every day. But my kids and grandkids and the younger than 30 gen. just don't see or use the paper as a source of news or even read the funnies. A must for me. They'll watch TV or check in online and I even suspect this is why they do not vote (which is another story) as TV news has a primary goal of gaining readers to survive which means it leans toward what is "sensational" and etc. All they tell you is "later we will ... blah blah blah". So you have to hang around if you want to see "later".
The solution is tough as the DN and other publications have realized and our illegal immigrant and Hispanic population, which is increasing at an alarming rate, will not subscribe. I really like the Daily News and admire the staff and sports. So how about sensationalizing the head lines a bit for starters and keep on keepin' on. It will come around and we'll all work to think of ideas to over come this temporary hurdle.
Second idea: How about a sports headline on the first page? Another idea: On the first page put, in bold oversize type accross the whole page, a list of the top 4 (or more) stories of the day and refer to the interior page where these stories can be read? (Hey, this is good idea!) Ya got to attract attention and make someone want to read on and this will make it easier for them to "get the news" and soon folks will be saying "The Daily News had an article on "something" newsworthy. Did you see it"? Another idea: How about asking subscribers to give "gift" subscriptions?
Thank you for the suggestions -- it's great to see readers taking such an interest in the future of the DN! The issue of appealing to a younger audience -- while not alienating older readers -- continues to be a topic of ongoing discussion at many newspapers. One of the things we're doing to draw in a wider variety of readers is introducing more interactive content: blogs, videos, slideshows, quizzes, and more to make the news come alive. It's always a work in progress as we take into account reader feedback.