Thursday, June 4, 2009

Decline and fall, cont.

On the premiere journalism job site the Vicad is advertising for a sports editor and a design editor for the sports pages. I dunno if there was a massacre or a rebellion, but a friend remarks that's a lot of supervising for a four-page sports section.
Guy who sends me stuff sends me a link to woeful prospects for the newspaper business:
The stats show that total newspaper ad sales dropped by an unprecedented 28.28% in the first quarter of 2009, a deep plunge that represents a loss of more than $2.6 billion in ad revenue compared year-over-year. Compared to 3 years ago - 2006 was a pretty good year for American newspapers - we’re looking at a drop of more than $4.5 billion in ad sales in just three years if you only take into account the first quarter.

Read all the bad news here.
My correspondent, who knows a thing or two about newspapers, writes, 'I don't read the vicad anymore, but I'd bet that despite plunging ad revenues, they are still standing by the company line: "We're locally owned so we'll be fine." But then in a month, at the end of the ... quarter, they'll have another round of layoffs...'
And another correspondent, long-time newspaper reader who is dismayed by the endless Fatal Funnel series, sends along the requirements for nomination for a Pulitzer Prize:
1. Newspapers generally nominate themselves for Pulitzer Prizes. The fee for each entry is $50, and the material that the newspaper wants the prize board to consider must be accompanied by an entry form. An entry has to fit into one of the 21 categories; it can't be submitted on the grounds that it is just generally good. To be eligible, a paper must be published in the U.S. at least weekly.
2. In 2009, for the first time, online-only news organizations were eligible for the Pulitzer. Before, it was restricted to print publications.

That first sentence is the key here. Don't be surprised to hear that the series has been nominated for a Pulitzer.
A really useful segment for the series would be on the effect of illegal immigration on crime rates in Victoria. Right offhand, I can think of maybe three killings in Victoria attributable to illegals. When the paper ran a story on the sentencing of one of the murderers, there was no indication of his status. When I mentioned this omission to an editor, she told me that it would not be 'helpful' to include that information.

4 comments:

Pilot said...

So you see some posturing to align Gabriel or The 150 year "family owned" newspaper as a Pulitzer nominee, eh? Or was it just to be able to say there was a nomination. That will likely be lost on the legions of Advocate readers. I dare say that there will be more who are more interested in the Roxanne Pulitzer 1988 Playboy spread, than a remote nomination by itself by the Vicad for a Pulitzer Prize for flogging a dead horse for a couple of calendar years.........

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