Print This Post Print This Post

Dec

5

Live-blog: Plain Dealer’s Susan Goldberg on Feagler & Friends


Bookmark and Share

By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:20 pm December 5th, 2008 in Blogging, Business, Cleveland+, Economy, Media, Ohio, Tech, Writing 

Comments

6 Responses to “Live-blog: Plain Dealer’s Susan Goldberg on Feagler & Friends”

  1. 1 LilaTovCocktail on December 6th, 2008 12:19 am

    Jill thanks for doing this — I’m sorry I missed it live but it was great to be able to read it later.

    The discussion sounded pretty painful. That whole bloggers in the basement in pajamas thing… and the arrogant belief that online readers can’t discern “real” news. Sheesh.

    It was like someone wrote a skit portraying the “Crusty Curmudgeons” and they just read it aloud.

    Can someone please fire all the managers and rehire all the actual workers? In fact, let’s do that in the auto industry and a few others as well …

  2. 2 Have Coffee Will Write » Blog Archive » THIS IS HOW YOU START A REVOLUTION… on December 6th, 2008 8:40 am

    [...] LilaTovCocktail writes: Can someone please fire all the managers and rehire all the actual workers? In fact, let’s do that in the auto industry and a few others as well… Posted in Dead-Tree Media, What They Say… [...]

  3. 3 Keith on December 6th, 2008 5:38 pm

    I say this as someone who used to wait all afternoon as a kid to digest The Cleveland Press and, had the privilege of working their for the last year of their existence.

    Dear Susan: If you have to axe a full half of your staff from their height YOU ARE NO LONGER A VIABLE NEWSPAPER.

    And your coverage exemplifies it.

    Put a fork in the PD and the business of print journalism. They’re toast.

    And it’s largely the fault of cowardly newspaper owners and editors who refuse to innovate and provide in depth dramatic coverage of events both locally, nationally and internationally.

    And no, Ted Diadiun, allowing knuckle draggers to spew invective anonymously in your online stories does not count as innovation. It reeks of desperation.

    The corporate mindset killed print.

    And Dick Feagler, this old crotchety dinosaur I once admired, is a perfect example. He has far outlived his usefulness to meaningful discussion. Time moves on Dick, you either move with it and adapt or become irrelevant, and, sadly, in your case, become like a embarrassing guest who doesn’t know when to leave.

    I still wonder who got the axe.

  4. 4 LilaTovCocktail on December 6th, 2008 6:45 pm

    Oh my god, Keith — what you said is perfect. That is exactly how I feel about the PD and all its ill-advised recent choices.

    To find out who got the axe (and who took the buyout) you can check Roldo: http://realneo.us/content/pd-staff-members-dress-black-today

  5. 5 Keith on December 7th, 2008 8:54 pm

    Good Heavens!!! THERE not their. I think I’m losing my mind. Well, I could never edit my own work anyway :)

    BTW, thanks Lila for the refer to Roldo (hey, that has a ring to it as Sinatra would say).

    Sarah Crump, who I worked with at the Press, survives. She visited me in my bookstore last summer and I was worried about her.

    I worked with Maggie Martin at the News-Herald and I see former N-H staffer Karen Sandstrom who I worked with in the early 90s when I was stringing for the N-H, also got the axe.

    Distressing is the let go of David Briggs and Janet Filmore. They did a fine job with the religion beat and I can say this as the former religion writer of the Cedar Rapids Gazette. I guess this pretty much ends coverage of religion in the PD. All wire from now on, eh? So stupid and short sighted – religion coverage, GOOD religion coverage, is one of the subjects that really attracts readers nowadays.

    I have to take issue with Roldo’s comparison to what happened this week with the demise of the Press. While this was certainly a blow, the paper, nominally, still stands and publishes. When the Press died, a part of the city died with it and even Feagler said so at the time.

    The ultimate injustice of this entire incident is that Kevin O’Brien, Ted Diadiun and Jean Dubail still keep their jobs.

    This is obviously consistent with the PD’s almost stated policy of letting arrogant and idiotic management minions pile drive the paper into the ground.

  6. 6 John Ettorre on December 10th, 2008 12:12 pm

    Your bookstore? Tell us more about that, if you would. As for how they’re still “nominally” publishing, that seems absurd on its face, at least to me. They still have about 180 people in the newsroom, which is still a hell of a lot of people. They were bloated before, and horribly unproductive. If those people all have a fire under their butt (and I believe they must), that’s a hell of a lot of firepower to do journalism. Of course, they’ll continue to be handcuffed by horrible management. Susan Goldberg has been nothing short of a disaster.

Leave a Reply




"));