DISQUS

michael hines · 1 year ago

actually, i see very little good that can come out of this. it's all about scaling back, providing less competition in places and hoping one person can do the job of two. i mean, when i read about this collaboration, i could only think it meant that reporters in outlying areas would be let go and those that remained would report for both papers. fewer eyes get to watch the till, as it were. worse, i don't see how this makes anyone more agile. if that means loading up a reporter or editor with more responsibilities, then that takes away the ability to put indepth stories. and maybe it even points to continued inertia, you know? fort worth is several miles from dallas, if the goal is hyperlocal, how can they collaborate on anything? how often do the policies of dallas and fort worth overlap? and if the goal isn't hyperlocal, it flies in the face of everything the web has been about, or at the very least, everything newspapers have told their employees they are aiming for.

i don't know, i guess i'm just not looking forward to seeing what's next.

Dave · 1 year ago

Just saw Michael's comment. I'd imagine that this announcement means the two papers won't duplicate effort on bigger stories. There might be some cuts, but hopefully it frees up reporters to focus on two things that blogs struggle with:
- major stories that require lots of investigating / researching / interviewing. Giant, full-page Sunday human interest stories. Pulitzer-candidate exposes. Investigative stuff that requires a reporter who knows the beat, has connections, can be trusted by disgruntled ex-employees, and has the resources and the know-how to ask the right questions to the right people to dig up what's really going on.
- strong collections of local stories. A school or a company can do a really good job of addressing the news about their organization, and personal blogs help, but no one is doing a great job yet of pulling together local news from the school's blog and the city's blog and the city council watch group's email and 25 personal blogs. Combine the local news for a city, then target it at the residents of that city.
Both of those are things that most online sources have trouble with, both can't be outsourced to the New York Times or emerging international economies, and both are something I'd like to see more of from the local papers....maybe this announcement means it's a possibility.

Vedo · 1 year ago

I think that it could be that you are looking at through the eyes of a journalist. Not a bad thing, in fact, I'm glad you stopped by and commented. I had not considered it from that perspective obviously. However, I tend to think that more and more people are going to the source for information i.e directly from the organization, government agency, etc. We obviously still need the watchful eye of the media to shed light on things, but surely you can see how something had to change in order to remain viable (and relevant) in the market.

Unlocked Camera Phones · 6 months ago

I agree with you!

Dave · 1 year ago

I'm famous! Thanks. :)

For some reason, I thought that DMN and Star-Telegram already shared news...but maybe I'm thinking of DMN and WFAA?

The announcement is interesting, and it's good to see something that's a little outside of the box, but really it's nearly the same concept as buying access to wire stories from Routers or the AP, right? I see this quote -- "[o]ur challenges are with the other media, not each other," -- and it makes it sound like they've identified the Internet as their nemesis or a monster they have to battle and defeat.

Sarah McClellan-Brandt · 1 year ago

I agree! Half the links on our web site's "news" section are broken and I am having to scan the hard copies into pdfs and re-post!

Vedo · 1 year ago

Sarah, you put much more effort in it than I do. Once the story is gone, I drop it from the recent news page. If they can't see how it benefits them to keep this information available, then I can't see how it benefits me to expend the extra effort to show it off for them.

Dan Keeney, APR · 1 year ago

Richie: I am convinced that the marketing/sales teams at news content creators (I am officially no longer calling them newspapers because it doesn't apply) should step into rush hour traffic in hopes of getting really bad brain damage. Okay, maybe I watch too many soap operas, but amnesia could really be the answer. There is too much institutional memory driving sales and marketing decisions. The fact that people have always paid for the news through subscriptions drives the decision to make online readers pay, even though online readers have plenty of sources of information and little patience. It is a failed revenue model.

The best example of this that I have witnessed was down in Houston in the run-up to Hurricane Ike. The Houston Chronicle was featuring chats with various experts -- and not a single one of them was sponsored. There were hundreds of questions streaming in, suggesting there were thousands on the site, but nobody thought to contact The Home Depot to sponsor it.

So with amnesia, these brilliant marketing/sales leaders would be relieved of their outdated newspaper mindsets and would be able to look at their dynamic range of products with fresh eyes.

That solution to the problem may cause some traffic problems, though.

Linda Ld Jacobson, APR · 1 year ago

I look at the WSJ as the ultimate (am I naive?). I pay an online subscription and am very happy with their product.

I think the ST needs to bite the new media bullet in a big and new way. I agree that making content disappear is not the answer. By clinging to shreds of the old model, they do a disservice to their readership and their bottom line.

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