The dead trees edition of today’s Kansas City Star had this headline on the front page, below the fold:
The Star is eliminating 120 jobs
Online:
Amid a drop in print ad revenue, The Star is cutting 120 jobs
By DAN MARGOLIES
The Kansas City StarThe Kansas City Star is cutting 120 jobs, or about 10 percent of its work force, as part of its parent company’s elimination of 1,400 positions companywide….
….In an interview Monday, Zieman said he expected 20-22 positions, out of about 285, to be eliminated in the newsroom. That marks the biggest newsroom reduction since 1978, when some 50 employees left, many voluntarily, after Capital Cities bought the newspaper in 1977 from Star employees for $125 million….
tiny URL [emphasis added]
I didn’t know it was fashionable these days for the traditional media to put their own obituary on the front page.
Yep, times are tough, so you cut production of content (news reporting) which in turn leads to lower readership and ad revenue. Sounds like a plan dubya’s administration would come up with – if they didn’t like news. Oh, wait.
….STEWART: So I wanted to come here today and say… (CROSSTALK)
STEWART: Here’s just what I wanted to tell you guys.
CARLSON: Yes.
STEWART: Stop. (LAUGHTER)
STEWART: Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.
BEGALA: OK. Now (CROSSTALK)
STEWART: And come work for us, because we, as the people…
CARLSON: How do you pay?
STEWART: The people — not well….
Yep, that bottom line means more corporate profits, less news, a less informed public, a weaker democracy. Sounds like a plan. You got an idea now how the dinosaurs must have felt after that big asteroid hit the earth?
http://www.tonyskansascity.com…
a good paper on the way to becoming a total mediocrity. After the paper was sold a few years ago, many took early retirement packages, more have been dismissed recently, the paper has cut and continues to cut corners wherever and whenever (format has especially suffered) and began its march to increase subscriptions by mimicing USA today. Front page is frequently given to articles that should, by all rights, be relegated to a features section–or just as often to a tabloid–while national news is hard to find and almost always burried somewhere in small , summary articles. The editorial page still seems unaffected in tone although fewer editorials are written and the local writers they have selected to write columns in lieu of national, syndicated opinion columnists, are usually, with some notable exceptions, either bland very conservative.