Let’s get real, there’s no such thing as “reinvention” when it comes to daily newspapers…
Forget what the flaks at Kansas City Star parent McClatchy keep telling everybody while they lay off news staff left, right and sideways. Nobody in the newspaper industry’s been able to figure out how to make the sort of dough they did for decades.
Not to mention that long as you have the exact same folks at the top who ran the car into the ditch trying to mastermind a fix, it’s kinda like that definition of insanity.
Isn’t it obvious?
That the dudes from the good old days of newspapers who’ve ridden heard over countless failed attempts to fix things have to go?
Because after more than 10 years of tinkering with the old business model, all they can come up with is more of the same; more layoffs, more content elimination, more day-old front page news, more subscription costs and more excuses.
The thing is, nobody at the top of the corporate food chain seems clued in to the obvious:
That the folks in charge – not just the sacrificial newsroom lambs – have to go.
What halfway successful business (or sports team) retains the same top dawgs who keep losing year in and year out?
In what universe does that make sense?
Yet here we are with old school newspaper dudes like Mark Zeiman and a convicted felon who had an affair with a married subordinate still piloting the plane.
What’s the word I’m looking for? Accountability, I think it’s called.
Now a brief time out for a reality check:
Daily newspapers have painted themselves into a corner by continuing to appeal to the lowest (oldest) common denominator – the less tech savvy readers who cling to a quaint, romantic habit of wandering into their front yards every morning to get day-old news.
Nothing wrong with that…
Except they’re fighting a losing battle to attract and retain tech savvy younger readers – people in their 20s, 30s and 40s who can’t fully make sense of shelling out hundreds of dollars each year for news they have to dry out in their ovens or that may not get delivered.
Newspaper’s only apparent strategy for surviving this economic nightmare is to double down on the losing proposition of laying off more staff and offering less breaking local news.
Ladies and gentlemen, that’s a death spiral.
To be fair, if locals really want to stay abreast of local news – not burning houses, drive by shootings, local sports and weather, they’ve little choice other than to hold their noses and subscribe to the Star (or skim its freebie headlines long as allowed).
As for the recent layoffs, eh…
At this stage of the game how shocking is it that a dude pushing 60, reviewing local bands of 20 and 30 somethings took a bullet?
When you go from more than 2,000 staffers to maybe 200 and change, the shock and awe factor disappears.
Look, as a refugee of the Pitch, I’m well acquainted with the fact that in its hey day – not so long ago – the Star was ridiculously overstaffed and shelled out minuscule paychecks to less than wildly capable reporters… because it could afford to.
Even in real world terms that didn’t make much sense.
However now we’re at a point in time where what’s left of these hulking news dinosaurs are on the endangered species list.
And clearly, people far smarter than I have not been able to calculate a successful strategy to transition from the here and now to a future of objective journalism.
Maybe they’re just too big to fail.
Still it’s hard to conjure a vision of who exactly might bail local daily newspapers out.
That presents a sad reality for bright young talents like the Star’s Steve Vockrodt who already has come face-to-face with the prospect of having to get a “real: job.”
Unfortunately, until the financial folks behind these long-in-the-tooth print news vessels come to the conclusion that throwing good money after bad is not a winning strategy, readers are going to get both more and less of the same.
And God save us from a future where KC Confidential, Jimmy C Says and Tony’s whatever are the last ones standing when it comes to local, big city news.
The Bezos “White Knight” purchase of the Washington Post will be the business model for surviving Print Publications in the future. (No doubt, the term “White Knight” would be offensive to the new owner/citizen-of-the-world/globalist Bezos. ” Gender neutral white guilty knight”?)
“Democracy Dies In Darkness”. Your spirit brother, Joseph Goebbels Bezos couldn’t have come up with a more insulting, outrageous slogan for what is an agenda driven, agitprop purveyor of boilerplate Soros Socialist shit.
But really, thanks Jeff, your non existent in depth coverage of the greatest abuse of power in our nation’s history is worthy of a Pulitzer that you could place directly next to the one acquired by Walter Duranty. While highly stationed, unelected bureaucrat-criminals in the Deep State FBI, CIA, NSA, DOJ, the State Department, conspired, all, with premeditation, malice and criminal intent to frame a sitting President for a non existent crime, with illegal surveillance designed to spy on an incoming administration, funded by it’s political opposition, your ‘Newspaper’ sat idly by and parroted the daily Pelosi/Schiff talking points from the Socialist Silo.
Here is an article, from “Business Insider” that describes how the Washington Post was “reinvented” by Bezos. It is flat out, unintentionally hilarious.
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-washington-post-changed-after-jeff-bezos-acquisition-2016-5
For starters, this gem-
“Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions. An earlier version of this article failed to disclose this in an editorial error.”
Oh…, okay. Jesus, pathetic.
Then-
“Bezos isn’t involved in setting The Post’s editorial direction at all.”
LMAO!!! Yeah, right, sure…
That gopher faced fuck Mark Zuckerberg will be the next hero to step up and grab up some ailing, albatross fish wrap that will enable him to spread the Progressive gospel through still another venue.
Google, Face-Manchurian Candidate-Book, Amazon, Twitter, YouTube et al are the most powerful companies in the history of the United States. Their power is an all consuming Black Hole that sucks the strength out of discourse through “Shadow Bans” effected by Commissar-Thought-Leaders who are in lock step with the Pigressive Narrative.
No left, right or Libertarian faction in American life, should have this much power.
We broke up Standard Oil and that threat was minuscule compared to the threat of these corrupt, Fascist “Metropolis” Captains of no industry.
The Kansas City Star, like the Post, is a disgrace.
Trump was right. His “wires” were “tapped” and the Main Stream Media, is THE ENEMY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
you’d be good teamin up with guiliani….
you’ve both lost your minds.
The ones flipping and squealing on trump are not the left wing….the
far left…..progressives….THEY’RE REPUBLICANS…ALL OF THEM….
COHEN.
FLYNN…
EVENTUALLY MANAFORT….
PRIEBUS
COMEY- LIFELONG REPUBLICAN
AND THE REST OF THE FLIPPERS.
WASHINGTON POST HASN’T CHANGED SINCE BEZOS…THEY’VE
ALWAYS BEEN AN INVESTIGATIVE REPORT PAPER…
REMEMBER BERNSTEIN….WOODWARD…REMEMBER THEIR WORK
IN CLINTON ERA…..NIXON ERA….BUSH ERA….PENTAGON PAPERS…
Now little chuckie, we know you’ve breathed too much dirt digging those
holes but go back down to your basement…put your tin foil hat on….turn
on mr. jones and listen to his conspiracy theories and wait til your time
comes. What a freaking fool.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
It’s a comfort to me and perhaps others, that in this dark, Deep State era in our Republic’s history, that comments like yours, are usually, the high water mark for what passes as intelligent opinion from the Antifa-Fascist-Left.
From across the field in the culture/civil war, you are an “idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. But then, when you get closer, it is clear. You are an “idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.
If anybody has an McClatchy(MNI) stock just sell now while it’s worth $9. You’d be a fool to keep it.
Meanwhile in Denver …. it’s not nice to defy the publisher!! https://www.denverpost.com/2018/05/03/denver-post-chuck-plunkett-resigns/
The Star still has a small place in our lives. I’ve had occasion over the past year to need to lend a little advice to some KC oldsters coming up on the end of things, and my first referral is always to the Star. There, they will find deals, group rates, etc., on everything from good funeral homes, solid graveyard plots, and crematories offering 2-fer and 3-fer rates, particularly around the holidays.
Don’t the hearing aid bargains and erectile action!
And the Nebraska Furniture Mart Add!!