"Whoa, can we get all that in a nice,
easy, color pie chart?"
-- New York magazine's Daily Intel blog, in a gossip round-up this morning that notes: "USA Today founder Al Neuharth took nearly a quarter-mil from his journalism charity, the Freedom Foundation, to pay himself; $66,000 to donate to his own wife's adoption agency; and $46,000 to pay his daughter as a trustee."
A bit off topic, but tied into Jim's headline on this item... Uhhhhhhh, pretty soon there won't be any graphics in USA Today, period. Has anyone gotten a look at that department in recent months or noticed the absence of meaningful print graphics in the paper? They have no editors/directors left, very few artists and have destroyed everything that ever made any sense in terms of producing, assigning and editing quality artwork. Gosh, for a paper that built its rep largely on visuals and taught major metros how to build graphics departments, USAT's art department is a wasteland of visual journalism and leadership. Few visuals and virtually no journalism left. So many good people just disappeared, seemingly overnight. To let that once vital department go to hell is a bad omen for the rest of the paper.
ReplyDeleteI hope someone is taking this seriously.
ReplyDelete4:34:
ReplyDeleteIf a certain M.E. hadn't driven everyone else out of the building over 25 years (and driven the ones that stayed to tears), things might be different. But the sad thing is that the legacy of a guy who embraced the Joseph Stalin School of Management (even as he made and some substantial innovations along the way) is there isn't much legacy. And like you said, that's a real puzzle and a real bummer.
In addition to that ME who 5:57 speaks of, I also blame upper management at USAT for letting the graphics department fall into such a state... When this graphics ME began driving everyone out or fired them under the guise of the layoffs or threatened them in some other manner, where was the editor or executive editors? Why didn't they see the red flags after so many high-ranking departures in such a short period of time? Where was HR or the GCI attorneys? They just let this man do what he wanted or were just easily conned by him, I guess. And now USAT is left with a graphics department that is a joke in the industry run by a group of online loyalists who have nothing but contempt for newsprint and all who are connected to it regardless of what they say in public. This lame and stripped department impacts the entire paper. Makes my job that much tougher. Makes the sections less attractive. What a waste. Not sure who I feel worse for, the folks who were forced to leave that department for no good reason or those of us left behind.
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