Saturday, March 21, 2009

Why traditional news-gathering can be so costly

Reporting is still labor-intensive, Internet or not. Yesterday, for example, I called Continental Airlines with a simple question: When is this year's annual stockholders meeting? The answer would tell me whether Gannett Director Karen Hastie Williams -- also a Continental board member -- faced a fourth meeting conflict this year. More than 11 minutes later, I finally got my answer: No. Here's the two-minute, edited version, showing why traditional news-gathering ain't cheap:



Related: More episodes on Gannett Blog's YouTube channel

3 comments:

  1. Hey Jim, newsgathering takes time and effort does it?

    Please let the folk at Newsquest know this. They seem to believe stories just fall into the laps of journalists and can be written up in minutes.

    No time, energy or (crucially) investment in talent needed.

    (Yes, I am a frazzled employee.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, our publisher thinks that page design and layout should likewise be super-easy to do, maybe a page every 5 minutes.

    Clueless.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well, he gave you a computer didn't he. Just punch the easy button.

    ReplyDelete

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