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“Dispensable” journalists
Posted By katie allison granju
It’s seriously hard times in the news industry, and the LA Times announced yesterday that 150 newsroom jobs are being cut.
On June 5, in a conference call with bankers, analysts and reporters, Mr. Zell, the chairman and chief executive of Tribune, and Randy Michaels, the chief operating officer, said Tribune’s newspapers would print 500 fewer pages each week, a 12 percent reduction, to save money.
Mr. Michaels said that fact, combined with his conclusion that some journalists were so unproductive as to be dispensable, meant the company could get by with significantly fewer newsroom employees. He singled out The Los Angeles Times, citing figures that he said showed it had a far less productive newsroom than some other Tribune papers.
Michaels is the guy who came up with the brilliant scheme measuring each journalist in the newsroom’s productivity by how many column inches he/she produces each week.
…the struggling company has looked at the column inches of news produced by each reporter, and by each paper’s news staff. Finding wide variation, they said, they have concluded that it could do without a large number of news employees and not lose much content.
This is sad. Certainly, how much copy one cranks out each week is one measure of newsroom productivity. But what about the investigative reporter who spends 75% of her time ferreting out the great info she then writes about? Fewer column inches for her, but important reporting getting done. And what about the really great columnists, who may only publish a piece twice a week, but spend days crafting the perfect turn of phrase?
Sad.
Jul 3rd, 2008
