Maybe Mathews just doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. As The Gambit wrote in that same piece:
The paper’s new publisher, Ricky Mathews, who also is overseeing similar if not more drastic cuts at Newhouse papers he has been running in Alabama, was absent from the newsroom throughout the termination process.
Actually, Mathews did mention layoffs in his piece:
If we had done nothing, layoffs would be inevitable, year after year. Our ability to respond as we are responding today would have been severely impacted.
As Audit Publisher Dean Starkman pointed out the other day, “So, instead we’ll do them now.”
What a fiasco.
Newhouse has sucked for a very long time.
Freedom of the Press is Not Free
http://blog.locustfork.net/2012/06/freedom-of-the-press-is-not-free-3/
#1 Posted by GW, CJR on Wed 20 Jun 2012 at 11:22 AM
OR: Making these changes, even if they're money-losers, is far more palatable to the company than potentially paying out millions in a class-action lawsuit over failing to adhere to its contract with workers (job security pledge). These changes create a new company that is completely severed of the old job security pledge, and by taking severance or accepting a position with the new company, employees are signing away their rights to sue. This is very important to Advance.
#2 Posted by Dave B., CJR on Wed 20 Jun 2012 at 01:14 PM
This is about controlling the level of information available to voters as well as sucking all value out of a business. Uninformed voters make poor decisions, as recent election results have demonstrated. Low information voters elect officials who do not enact legislation conducive to the financial health and growth of the working and middle class. The current state legislature will allow home-school children to be taught that evolution "has been disproved" and that humans and dinosaurs lived concurrently.!
#3 Posted by Anne, CJR on Wed 20 Jun 2012 at 02:58 PM
Anne is correct, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Newhouse wasn't directly involved with ALEC and/or the Koch brothers. We have been noticing the gradual de-newsification of the T-P over the past several years, along with more bad editing and less literate writing (the quality of which had been a hallmark of the paper before the post-K firings began). Now they promise us "more emphasis on sports and entertainment" -- WHAT? Like the Mobile Press-Register? One is hard pressed to find one scrap of national or international news there, unless it reflects badly on the current president. What will really be hard to find will be the small notices of some new land grab or municipal decision that adversely affects our daily lives, ignorance of which will damn us to the corruption we have been endeavoring to root out since 2005.
#4 Posted by Cynthia Scott, CJR on Thu 21 Jun 2012 at 10:28 AM
"Worse, Mathews doesn’t talk about any numbers (beyond Nola.com traffic but, notably, not Nola.com revenue), which makes his piece even less credible."
Actually, this has been happening for a long time in newspapers. Every time one of them redesigns, a claim is made that the new version is more "easily navigated." Generally at some point someone claims, in print, that the change either has attracted or will attract more readers. No numbers are ever cited.
A check of circulation numbers would indicate these claims have been lies for quite a while. Yet they continue.
It'd be great if CJR would bother to look into this at some point.
#5 Posted by Robert Knilands, CJR on Thu 21 Jun 2012 at 02:29 PM
sports,enterainment,empty nutrition high calory food and drink ,science empty ,reason based on gulp and uncritically accepted premises leads to a nation of fat sheep ready to follower any so called leader who cues their emotions and does not engage their interlect. shut, down the liberies,offer only sound bit news and undervloped ideas. attention span decreases and welcome to the brave new world and the 1984 reality.
#6 Posted by henry kraft, CJR on Sun 24 Jun 2012 at 11:47 AM
Why not get the Morning Advocate from Baton Rouge to deliver to the New Orleans area? It has a great sports section and is fairly conserevative. The T P has published nothing of value to the northshore readers for the past several years.
#7 Posted by carl cucullu, CJR on Thu 12 Jul 2012 at 01:17 PM