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New York, 11:36 PM
Mon Nov 16
59 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/04/09
And most don't know what brought us to this point, and those that do I hope are reading this and will wipe that smug, granite countertopped smilee off their faces and begin to feed society and it's inhabitants rather than steal their daily bread.
11/04/09
If you volunteer and you get it, yay, funemployment.
If you volunteer and you don't get it (there are too many volunteers), you have identified yourself as someone who wants to leave.
If you don't volunteer and you just get laid off, a package would have been better. #timemagazine
11/04/09
Does anyone see the end to the bloodletting? Which industries are next?
Makes for a Merry-Fucking-Christmas.
Thanks Santa. #timemagazine
11/04/09
11/04/09
10/28/09
Unlike his debt plan for Tribune, he is sadly more right than wrong about that. #newyorktimes
10/28/09
I assume advertisements make up the bulk of the Times' revenue, the newsstand and subscription prices just covering the actual production and distribution. I assume too that there's a bit of a feedback loop there-- when subscription number and measured readership falls (deceasing that source of revenue) so does the influx of advertisements (which must be paid for at a rate proportional to the peepers paper-peeping)). At what point did subscriptions or readership fall below the profitable point?
Second, how is online readership and its ad revenue not meeting this deficit? Clearly we're not (yet) paying $1.50 or less a day to download our articles, but surely there's revenue there. Is it that it can be precisely measured (by number of clickthroughs), that this whole thing is failing? Do people just not click on ads? Google apparently makes that work as an income source, why doesn't the Times? (I'm not trying to glibly construct counterexamples, I'm actually ignorant.)
Third, in a doomsday scenario of big newspapers actually failing and shuttering their windows (the new Times building becoming the biggest Lane Bryant in Midtown), where will foreign correspondence and investigative journalism come from? Nonprofits like Propublica? Wire services? Will the Gawkers of the world start doing street reporting or begin sending their Hamilton Nolans (whom I actually imagine is pretty rugged) to Basra?* Or will the inevitable (antitrust-unfriendly) group decision to start charging $10 a month for ala carte access avert this whole apocalypse anyway?
Phew. Thanks.
* - Really, not snark. Well. Maybe using Hamilton as an example. But could anyone foresee bloggers becoming "actual journalists" in a large way, if they weren't just on the periphery of larger, richer media corporations? #newyorktimes
10/28/09
Another problem would be that while people click on ads, a lot of online readers use adblocking software because they don't care for all of the dancing, jumping, flashing, obnoxious crap that comes across as online advertising. (That's when the ads are legit, which isn't always the case, hmmm?) That would seem to substantially cut into clickthroughs.
But it does seem as if the Times is still running with a 1990s kind of bloat. These staff numbers are off the hook by today's standards. For example, there are four people selling ads in Dallas; WTF is up with that?
The "doomsday" scenario that you outline is already happening at the third- and fourth-tier papers. Look at Michigan, where the state's two largest papers have cut home delivery to three days a week, and offer a 32-page newsstand edition on the other days. Elsewhere, Flint, Saginaw, and Bay City are only publishing three days a week, while the Ann Arbor News closed altogether, to be replaced by annarbor.com, which offers a print edition two days a week. The other Advance/Booth newspapers (Grand Rapids, Muskegon, Kalamazoo and Jackson) are next on the chopping block, and Gannett's papers outside Detroit (Lansing & Battle Creek), and Hearst's paper in Midland can't be far behind.
Then there's the situation in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is an essay unto itself. Let's just say that the Chronicle probably won't be around in 10 years, for starters. #newyorktimes
10/28/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
This is a sad day for the old gray lady
10/28/09
10/28/09
If your jobs produced value I could see giving a fuck, but nobody buys the newspaper. The staff is bloated by any traditional measure of costs and revenue, to say nothing of how it stacks up against leaner competitors.
Who gives a goddamn for the gray lady if it doesn't make any money? This is America. If you don't bulldoze the vintage diner you can't build the bustling McDonald's. #newyorktimes
10/28/09
@ christianm.martin
Mourning. Decrying. Pondering. All of the above. Not relishing. #newyorktimes
10/28/09
Props to the Observer, too. I've always figured that the Times was way overstaffed, but this really nails it. I could imagine that an art department of 113 was justified in the days before computers, but this looks like classic featherbedding to me.
The problem with these wholesale cuts at any newspaper or magazine is that the leadership rarely thins itself out or sets an example by sacrificing their own pay. Instead, copy editors are jettisoned, and the quality of the product declines.
Le sigh. #newyorktimes
10/28/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
In other words, they are out drinking. #newyorktimes
10/28/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
My brunch after my wedding was at Butch McGuires.
10/28/09
10/28/09
And yes, the Green Door is still kickin'. #newyorktimes
10/28/09
10/28/09
12/04/08
12/04/08
do they same out similar memos when they "suck the drip" out of hollywood flacks?
seriously. they pay millions of dollars for pictures of babies (who all fucking look the same) and they can't renew the contracts of a few stringer reporters? sexiest employers alive, i tell ya.
12/04/08
12/04/08
Me, I'll just get on Team Miley Cyrus.
12/04/08
12/04/08
12/04/08
12/04/08
12/04/08
12/04/08
You need to work in more fashionable circles. While I worked in the clubs to make extra money I once got the most horrible flu for two weeks and ended up weighing well under 100 lbs. My family was in tears and desperately worried, but when I showed up at work some of my work pals said, "Girl you look GREAT! If you need new head shots, you should have them taken now!" No joke.
12/04/08
12/04/08
People should click on this post — [gawker.com] — repeatedly!
Six digits by Monday!
12/04/08
12/04/08
I'd rather get Sheila-rolled than getting Rick-rolled any day.
12/04/08
12/04/08
But I've met Sheila, and talked to her, at a couple of commenter meet-ups.
And let me tell you — she doesn't look ANYTHING like me.
12/04/08
12/04/08
It's a "real America" blue-collar poker. But yes.
12/04/08
she is exactly on point: i am certain a large share of the layoffs in new york...especially in the publishing and fashion industry....is attributable to businesses using the recession as an excuse to rid themselves of dead weight...under performers and what not
12/04/08
12/04/08
that is absolutely true
my business is actually using the recession as an opportunity to FIRE all the riff raff and HIRE all the top talent from competitors that are making short sighted reductions
i think the smartest businesses are those which take the long view
12/04/08
12/04/08
12/04/08
12/05/08