Betcha no one saw this coming: A reader of the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., is suing the newspaper for breach of contract. His logic: Just after he renewed his subscription, they cut staff and news hole, and they’re not giving him what he renewed for.
Keith Hempstead, an attorney and former reporter for The Fayetteville Observer, said in his complaint in Wake Superior Court: “Plaintiff alleges fraud in that the newspaper announced changes in the coverage after procuring renewals from Plaintiff and other subscribers.”
Hempstead told the N&O he could cancel his subscription, but he filed the suit to make a point.
“I wanted to get the newspaper’s attention and the news industry’s attention,” he said adding that he enjoys the N&O.
Read more here, from the News & Observer.
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Are we rollin’ downhill like a snowball headed for hell?
With no kind of chance for the flag and the Liberty Bell?
I wish a Ford and a Chevy would still last 10 years, like they should.
Is the best of the free life behind us now? Are the good times really over for good?
— Merle Haggard, “Are The Good Times Really Over?”
Last week, a bombshell came from San Jose, one that made me think again about what newspaper managers are really trying to accomplish with layoffs and buyouts. (Seems like assisted suicide, but no one’s called Michigan’s Finest, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, yet. Yet.)
Continue reading ‘Are the good times over for good?’
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In the June 2008 issue of Publisher’s Auxiliary, the newspaper of the National Newspaper Assn., there’s a headline that caught my eye:
“Production should be handled by professionals”
Well, yes. But what’s defined in the column below that headline as “professional”… isn’t.
Consultant Ken Blum says it’s inefficient for reporters and editors to lay out a weekly paper.
He’s right when he says five different reporters and editors can create a newspaper that looks like a camel — designed by committee. But then he says the wrong thing, in my opinion: “My advice — if you want your baby not to look like Joe Camel and get to bed on time, turn it over to the nannies in your graphics department. They have been better trained for the job, and they can do it better and faster.”
WHAT?
Continue reading ‘Let the back shop design your paper?’
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Tribune Co.’s Lee Abrams is back at it again, and I’ve already heard positive buzz from newsies outside the Tribune ranks.
Poynter’s Jim Romenesko has the “think piece” here.
Abrams, the company’s chief innovation officer, says newspapers have to break out the 2×4s to get people’s attention. You may have read earlier memos, where he’s said it’s time to scream, 1930s-style. Now he’s saying we have to hit readers over the head so they’ll know we have reporters in the field:
I met a reporter who spent 4 years in Baghdad. Dodging bullets…staying in Hotels protected by the Marines. Yet, I’ll bet NO-one outside of the building knew this person was risking their life in Iraq to get YOU the news. If it were CNN, you’d see rockets and RPG’s in the background as the reporter ducks shrapnel. In the paper, it’s usually a small byline.
You’re all probably thinking there’s a troll in Indiana you’d like to assign to a war-coverage job like that. But seriously, how many newspapers scream that they’re devoting their own resources to bring the world home?
(crickets chirping)
Continue reading ‘Tribune CIO: 15 Points To Grow Newspapers’
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You read right. The Florida Press Association’s Better Weekly Newspaper Awards included a second-place award for the Pinellas News for “overall graphic design.”
(Images and more after the break.)
Continue reading ‘Pinellas News gets first visual award in 12 years’
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