Grim News for a Paper in Jersey (A sign of the times)

Source: New York Times

But there was also an article on the front in the left-hand column that seemed to imperil all the other journalism around it:

“The owners of The Star-Ledger announced yesterday they will sell the newspaper if they cannot win union concessions and persuade a large number of nonunion, full-time workers to take buyouts in the next two months.

“The owners set a deadline of Oct. 1 for getting 200 of the newspaper’s 756 nonunion full-time employees to take a buyout and for achieving the union concessions,” suggesting that the paper’s non-union reporters and editors might be leaving in droves. In addition, the company wants union mailers and truckers to agree to concessions by the same deadline.

The article went on to quote Donald E. Newhouse, president of Advance Publications, as saying that the cuts are necessary because The Star-Ledger, along with its sister paper, The Times of Trenton, had been losing $30 million to $40 million a year. The causes included a familiar litany of ailments, including the cratering of classifieds, department store consolidation and the flight of ad dollars to the Internet. Mr. Willse was quoted in the article as saying he was still confident he could put out a good paper with the loss of one-quarter of his staff.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/business/media/04carr.html?ref=business

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This same story is being repeated all over the country, in newspapers large and small. Our ability to get any decent reporting is being reduced exponentially.

Perhaps if the papers hadn't unquestioningly run wire-service pro-war, pro-Bush, anti-Kerry, anti-Obama claptrap, they wouldn't be in the sad shape they are today.

It's a shame for the many talented journalists who do important local journalism.

Credibility is what supposedly sets newspapers above other forms of communication, and when they've shot their credibility, they have little left except for grocery-store coupons.

I've been reading newspapers since I was 10<1952> and now other then C-spans media page, the only paper I get is the sunday. That is the only redeeming part of Newsday, the coupons, and I admit to taking extras.

out of a newspaper someone else will be buying?

Every Saturday (the Sunday paper would always be out a day early), I'd have to go to the nearest gas station and buy the LA Times for the coupons, ads, and the front page. After a couple couponless papers, I was always reminded to check the paper had at least two books of coupons, and the mini book of Proctor and Gamble coupons didn't count.

If we wanted more coupons, we bought another fucking paper.

fucking asshole thieves

....is people taking 'extras'. If you believe in something support it. In order to keep up with costs papers should cost more but they don't because people won't buy it. If you believe in something, support it. Basic economics. Whining about it does no good nor does expecting someone else to pay for it.

They are not the only game in town when now anyone can get their custom point of view stories compiled for them online.

Ideology does not seem to be a factor.

Newhouse owns the Oregonian- and they can't even get the innocuous stories right. Not long back, they got busted by the local Alternative weekly, for making up statistics on an "acclaimed" meth series they put together and marketed to PBS.

Not just failing to check facts or do follow up- literally making up stuff up that a lot of people relied on (including Oregon's governor).

reading newspapers if they didn't think they were being lied to ---
gotten tired of reading reports which go counter to all reasoning --
not finding critical issues even mentioned in the newspaper --
concepts/ideas ignored ---

The Star Ledger was always right wing --- never bothered with it ---

Asbury Park Press was also taken over long ago ---
what was good about it was quickly gone --- and heavy religious overtones ---

Those lying sacks of shit at the local papers, and the larger regional papers, the ones that never put the need for Universal Single Payer Health Care in their headlines, that promoted George Bush and his dirty little wars, the constant pretence that PR blurbs sent in by companies like Monsanto need not be investigated but simply run as news, those pieces of lies and fibs and more lies are not being bought too often by too many.

and I am beyond stunned at the news. I found about this from an article in the Asbury Park Press over the weekend, while visiting relatives in New Jersey.

The Star-Ledger was making money during the years I worked there. It wasn't a great paper, but in recent years it's become a pretty good one, in terms of reporting. One of my good friends still works there and I am worried about what will happen to her.

Five of the six newspapers I've worked for, between 1972 and 1997, have disappeared or have been merged into oblivion. If the Star-Ledger goes under, that would bring the total to six. It's a darned shame.

let's just say that he's not in the best of moods right now

what a piece of garbage. They would get scooped by the semi-tabloid Trentonian on a daily basis. Both of them would get scooped by local blogs.


I'm finding that local city blogs and everyblock.com are better sources of neighborhood news than the papers. The Philadelphia Inquirer where I live is constantly scooped by the 3 free papers (PW, Citypaper, and PGN), which are in turn scooped by Phillyblog.com, Skyscraper Page Forums, phillyist.com, and phillyskyline.com.

The courant up here has reduced the size of the paper's news pages - puffing up the ads and fluff and taking out the real news.

Staff has been sliced and diced... it's sad to watch.

(Yes, such a thing exists...

The Hartford Courant has been pretty quiet about covering its own layoff of 57 newsroom employees, and TV newsman and blogger Rick Hancock says he’s heard that reporters have been told to spike such stories. He quotes the paper’s reader representative confirming that at least one story about the matter was killed, although she didn’t know why. The Courant has cut its newsroom staff by 55% since 1994.

screwed up big time. They did not react quickly or well to the Internet as a competitor.

With all the news sources available on line and "classified ad" competitors like craigs list, they just had their lunch eaten.

it will really on be a matter of time before the paper newspaper will disappear and electronic print media will take its place.

Kind of like ice block delivery to the home: technology caught up with them and pushed them out in favor of something new.