Monday, February 4, 2008

Flint Journal Insider

Want to keep track of the financial and staffing woes of The Flint Journal and, by extension, the entire newspaper industry? Read freefromeditors, a blog from a former Journal reporter who recently took a buyout and retired.

While the Flint Journal cleans house of its reporting staff, there has been little reduction in the ranks of the editors.

Through attrition, a number of copy editors have left, but mostly, the management type editors are still intact. In fact, one good reporter was promoted to an editor spot despite the mass exodus of many reporters.

I did hear that two copy editors from another Booth newspaper were involuntarily assigned to begin working at the Flint Journal Monday, Feb. 4 so as not to overburden the management staff.

In the meantime, reporters are told they must produce as a quota, one news story per day, and a Sunday show piece every two weeks. So now newspapers have gone from a creative enterprise to the newest widget factory.

UPDATE: Here's an interesting big-picture analysis of what's wrong with the newspaper industry.



4 comments:

  1. Thanks for your comment. I am going to link my blog to yours.

    Jim

    ReplyDelete
  2. Keep up the good work, Jim. Your views on the newspaper industry give people an angle that's hard to find.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks, I will....I enjoy your blog as well....

    BTW, I was at MSU with my former wife and my two young boys when the Great Blizzard of 1978 hit.

    I was a native Californian spending my first winter in Michigan so we had a pretty skewed idea of what Michigan winters were going to be like.
    Ironically, we got blasted last night with 12-inches here in Lapeer. But as a retiree it was nice not to have to find my way to work today.

    Jim

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  4. I've been yelling at my husband about the quality of copy editing in my Flint Journal, thanks for letting me know the 'WHY'.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.