1 Response to “Rumor Proves True… 53 Out In Chi-Cah-Go”

1. 1 Alfred R.
   Apr 22nd, 2009 at 7:46 pm

   Fifty-three more dedicated journalists laid off, while “un-webby” newspaper executives are sold on Polypragmosynean schemes for the future: “platform-neutral content,” “quick-hit information,” “short-blurb columns,” “blogs, blogs and more blogs,” “small volumes of tough-to-find stuff,” Facebook “news” feeds, Tweets, etc. It’s all set forth in the story this blog linked to: http://baltimorebrew.com/blog/?p=1825 (Sadly, it’s all on display in the daily Courant, too.)

   All of this so-called “content” has long been available online without any help from newspapers, of course, but now newspapers, lost in digital space, imagine that they can find their salvation in it (like the people in Polypragmosyne, who hope to work at trades they haven’t learned).

   The un-webby” executives, who cynically proclaim that they “care passionately about journalism,” seek to convert newsrooms into “platforms” for the cheap production of insta-news — commercially prepared granules of “content” that purport to be as good as news, that look and taste sort of like news, and that are much easier and cheaper to prepare. With all the hot water newspaper owners find themselves in, they imagine that they can make something out of these dried-out granules of news. Peering into cyberspace for enlightenment on the future of newspapers, they’re like lunatics dragging a pond into which they think the moon has fallen.

   Blogs and everything else produced by individuals in the “Long Tail” digital world are by definition the new media, not the old, and none of it can’t be packaged, co-opted, appropriated and controlled by the old media. The un-webby executives wouldn’t know this, of course, because they don’t go online:

   “Adding to the oddness of moment was the fact that Embry is almost as famous in town for being un-webby as he is for caring passionately about Baltimore and Baltimore journalism. (He’ll tell you himself that he doesn’t really read email on the computer and has an assistant print out all his messages on paper.”

   Newspapers should stick to what they know, what they’re good at: providing news. How are they going to do this if they’re laying off all the people that write, organize and edit it?

   Whenever executives write about a “smarter” process, as they did in this story about the latest round of layoffs, you know they’re talking about job cuts — job cuts that are ill-considered, short-sighted and self-serving, job cuts that will allow the executives to raise their own salaries while they idly fantasize about such things as “platform-neutral content.”

   Getting back to Charles Kingsley’s “Island of Polypragmosyne, it’s a “Rogues Harbour” where economists lecture on schemes that ought to have worked, businessmen on plans that should have succeeded, and newspaper executives on “platform-neutral content.”

   “So, how many reporters does it take to staff the platform-neutral newsroom (or platform-agnostic, as some call it)? Fewer than are there now, he said, declining to announce specifics on the next round of personnel reductions, rumored to be coming at the Sun for weeks. ‘We’ll be smaller at the end of this transition,’ he said.”

   No doubt the Courant will be “smarter” soon, too — so smart that no one will read it anymore. The newspaper execs — like the Polypragmosynean cobblers lecturing on orthopedics when they can’t sell shoes — will give talks on “platform-neutral content” when they can’t sell newspapers.