Forty years ago, The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., was the first news organization in North America to have an ombudsman -- a job that later became known as a reader advocate/representative or a public editor, the paper's Pam Platt wrote yesterday -- her last day in that job.Platt is joining the paper's editorial board. She quotes top Editor Bennie Ivory as saying: "The position has been a very valuable part of the newspaper, but I felt the need to move the resource to another area. I didn't think we should weaken the editorial voice of the newspaper."
Earlier: Praying about their next publisher in Louisville
[Image: today's Courier-Journal, Newseum]
Bennie's princess of milquetoast made the position irrelevant years ago.
ReplyDeleteNo ombudsman, no political cartoonist. But plenty of information center resources spent on advertorial, such as the Scene ladies' shopper, and plenty of money spent to produce dozens of videos a month that hardly anyone watches. Priorities are, as the kids would say, wack.
ReplyDeleteSurprised I haven't seen a posting yet about Gannett writing down $2.8 billion of goodwill for the quarter. It was in their SEC filing; they had warned this was coming when they released the quarterly earnings.
ReplyDeleteWasn't that related to downgrading the value of the Brit newspapers? Which has been reported here and elsewhere. Or is it something else?
ReplyDeleteThere have been several posts about the write-down, here and elsewhere, at the time it was announced -- before the Q2 results.
ReplyDeleteObvious to many at the time it was an ill omen. And, here we are now in job-cut land.