From a Vicad blog comment a little while back: "[K]eep in mind the old saying; 'Do on too others, that which you would want done on to you.'" Makes me wonder if Geo W is posting …
The paper seems to be making war on its own editorial page, given the poll it ran about reader preferences for the page. Advertising's been quite light lately; I eyeballed the paper late last week, maybe Friday, and estimated that there was no more than about 20% ad content. You can't pay the electric bill, buy newsprint, and put gas in the trucks on that kind of revenues. Interesting to watch, that sad deterioration in what was a pretty good little paper. My prediction is that we'll see a reduction in editions per week, maybe after the Christmas advertising season.
5 comments:
You know, it doesn't have to be this way. It's not just about the online edition being out of hand, it's the overall attitude of the Advocate.
And in all of this, where are John Roberts and Catherine McHaney? I am really concerned that they are being held hostage in a backroom somewhere down in the bowels of the Advocate building, hands tied, and gags in place.
I sincerely find it hard to believe that those two are okay with what is happening to their paper.
I would like to think that the owners have enough pride in long running a "daily", that their first recourse would be to send Cobler and his pack of Tweeting, Facebooking carpetbaggers packing and give it one last go with some real veteran newspaper folks. I'd bet I could come up with a handful of recently "retired", or squeezed out such folks who under the right editor, could at least make the paper a respectable and credible daily that actually looked like a newspaper when unrolled every morning, rather than a tabloid or a a high school yearbook. Never know, if it actually looked and read like a newspaper, maybe even some of the old advertisers would spring for some more ad space....
The decline of the VicAd is indeed a sad thing to watch. Not to diminish the loss of lives in the tragedy, but it must be what watching the Hindenburg crash and burn in slow motion. It's disintegrating, melting, and there's really nothing one can do except deal with the fallout, and hope when all is said and done, there will be pieces left to pick up and some semblance of a paper can be cobbled back together.
Crash and burn, baby, crash and burn.
Make that "like" watching the Hindenburg.....
It is kind of ironic that Victoria is growing at a rapid pace, with new businesses opening frequently, yet ads are decreasing. Very interesting. One would think it would be the opposite. And I hate to see it happen. I WANT the VicAd to succeed. I WANT to be proud of the paper again. With Cobler and his merry band of pseudo-"journalists" at the helm, it isn't going to happen.
Sugarmagnolia hit the nail on the head. VicAds slow decay into oblivion is directly because Chris refuses to acknowledge there even IS a problem with their reporters.
the VicAd problem is two-fold. lack of quality in the stories due to poor journalists, and the rampant and disgusting comments online. Trolls have free reign while those who speak out get deleted.
Just recently zorro namecalled the people who attended the Victoria TEA party, goons. Rather than deleting, Cobler made excuses for him. then refused to delete zorro's followup comment where he outright accused me of wanting to do him harm, even kill him.
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