Monday, April 20, 2009
5 comments:
Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."
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ReplyDeleteOpen Air is ironic, given the dearth of ads in it.
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ReplyDeleteWarning: I digress in this comment! Seriously, though, these points do relate to one overall problem. USA TODAY is sinking.
ReplyDeleteTo start, USA TODAY better start paying more attention to its core product, which remains the newspaper, and looked beyond the web and niche mags for future initiatives. Since it began spreading its resources around to the web site, Open Air and other ventures, the paper has been in steady decline. Some bad hires and just God awful management in the newsroom haven't helped either. Appears to me USAT head honchos just can't seem to come to terms with the fact that the paper still pays the bills, even in its diminished state. They appear to think the public will tolerate an increasingly inferior product forever while they run around laying off or driving out good people, hiring cheap help (many of whom have no clue about newspapering) and putting people in charge of departments or major initiatives who shouldn't even subscribe to a newspaper let alone work for one.
In the history of American businesses, I have never quite seen one like USA TODAY, where the product was sabotaged and destroyed from the inside, not from competitors. This outfit dismantled everything that worked for all the wrong reasons. Those who earn their keep their by spinning things will tell you that the paper is NOT the future. That other products and delivery methods had to be developed in order to obtain long-term survival, even if it put the paper in peril. Sounds nice, but how USAT has gone about it is nearly criminal and certainly not productive. And the irony is that the future isn't Open Air or usatoday.com. The web, in fact, is likely not to be the choice of most electronic subscribers several years down the road. Yet, USAT is trying to play catchup on a platform that is already beginning to become obsolete.
Meanwhile, the craft of news gathering has left the building and this is a newsroom that will once again fall behind on every level when new technologies are developed to deliver the news. There will be few legitimate journalists left to produce the news and to make responsible editorial decisions. Managers will have no people skills or even air of maturity or wisdom, but will be real handy with a Blackberry or iPhone. Further errors in hiring will be made by these managers. There has been plenty of evidence of this already, but the people at the very top are blind to it. The product(s) will continue to be plagued by more content errors and there will be an even wider gap between the have and have nots at USA TODAY. Some people will have to work even harder as more errors and failed experiments are passed down from the bosses. As things unravel further, more layoffs and furloughs will occur and eventually USA TODAY will be a totally insignificant player in the news business much the way GM became uncompetitive.
This is the future for USA TODAY unless someone in power begins to understand that things like news judgment and staff evaluation abilities still matter. There is still a place for editing and design, too. From where I sit, the trains are seemingly runner later and later these days while the content becomes more diluted and the paper is becomes less relevant, which means the brand becomes less relevant. I personally know of at least a dozen people either let go or bought out who were proven leaders at the nation's newspaper. They were largely replaced by people who might be well-intentioned but who have never contributed a thing to the success of the brand. Some have never worked in journalism a day before come to USA TODAY. It's like replacing a Super Bowl winning coaching staff with a new staff plucked from the college ranks. It might work out eventually, but why get rid of proven leaders who still had much to offer? Why was the transition done so abruptly?
In its quest to move forward, USA TODAY management has failed to preserve the present and has poured countless dollars into developing something that is NOT the future for any media brand. Way too much trust is being placed in all the wrong people who put on a nice dog and pony show from time to time, but aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. Sorry, they just aren't. They are a clique who cling to each other in order to protect their jobs while peddling more and more snake oil.