Here's another sign that U.S. community newspapers -- beyond The Arizona Republic -- are turning to regular folks to report community news, as part of the broader Passion Topics initiative. This is from a story today on the website of one of the central New York dailies:
"The Poughkeepsie Journal is looking to partner with community members to provide hometown news from all Dutchess County communities. We'll provide basic journalism training and the audience and reach of the largest website based in and about Dutchess County. Journalism experience is preferred but not required."
Talk about labor-intensive editing! I can only imagine how much extra attention these stories are going to require.
Talk about labor-intensive editing! I can only imagine how much extra attention these stories are going to require.
This is absolutely the future of the industry.
ReplyDeleteThe editor is a not so bright Gannett tool who helped decimate a once fine paper. Perfect. A good number of people from Dutchess County who commute to NYC for work will find it even easier to dump the PoJo and read a newspaper for intelligent people instead (NYT and WSJ).
ReplyDeleteJust an FYI ... The Central New York papers are generally considered to be Elmira, Binghamton and Ithaca. Poughkeepsie is in the Hudson Valley.
ReplyDelete8:22 Thank you. Aren't they organized in a group of four, though?
ReplyDeleteThe editor is indeed awful. The publisher is a bright guy, but a company man counting his days to retirement. He'll do whatever edicts drop from corporate until he can get out. This was once a proud paper that raked in awards and had excellent ad, production and news departments. Just about all the true talent fled or got pushed out in recent years. Mid-Hudson Valley is a pretty place, but if only the walls of that historic, Roosevelt-era building could talk. Of course the building is for sale. And those walls and murals in the lobby would bleed blood red and are haunted by the ghosts of ex-employees who were emotionally battered by manipulative, dysfunctional managers in publisher, editor and HR offices over the last 15-20 years. The misery was such that more than one person died way too young, with stress playing a big role.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Jim, the site is more closely tied to Westchester than the rest of the Big G site in New York State.
The best way to get rid of these incompetent managers is to let them hire a bunch of clueless kids. Sooner or later, they will libel someone and not have a good defense.
ReplyDeleteThat's right. Hire folks who have no training, don't know how to make sure the story is solid, and will get paid absolutely nothing.
ReplyDelete"Labor-intensive editing"? I seriously doubt these stories will receive ANY editing to speak of...
ReplyDeleteHere is the new moto: "If it fills the space it's news to us."
Kinda catchy huh?
For years, employees would ask the publisher in meetings about the intensive rumors of merging operations with Westchester. The publisher would always deny it, and get indignant at the questions.
ReplyDeleteThen, when the announcement finally came, the publisher acted as surprised as everyone else. I found that hard to believe. Either Gannett thought so little of the publisher that they decided to blindside him as well with the merger, or he knew and just decided to lie to his employees. Then, when employees asked him questions, he claimed that he didn't know the answers. Nice leadership there.
The editor has talent, but his style tends to rub his newsroom the wrong way. He would constantly want the newsroom to do the same work, heck, even more work, than they were able to do before the layoffs, then would get upset when people would be unable to do so. Well, what would you expect? Less people = less work done. Not less people = more work done.
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ReplyDelete3:31, the publishers have less and less knowledge about what is happening with their sites because everything comes through corporate. Publishers are just puppets on a string these days.
ReplyDeleteSorry my 4:44 post was too personal. Let me rephrase it. Just a few weeks ago, Mark Silverman was seem dining at an excellent French restaurant with the publisher and editor, and a few other big shots. I don't think they were talking about the weather.
ReplyDeletesomething must be ok since AP named Poughkeepsie the best operation of its size in N.Y.
ReplyDeleteDon't want to implicate anyone who may have seem these big shots together as being the person who posted about it. Not the case. Everyone in the building knows about the newsroom visit by Silverman - no one could miss him lumbering around. This citizen contribution crap is part of the passion topics rollout. And winning an AP state award is no great shakes these days, when you consider how all the papers competing in this category have diminished (and how many awards AP gives out). The only thing OK about PoJo are the few workers left - not the management.
ReplyDelete10:46, look up what the state AP award was. Then look up all other awards they won -- print and digital -- in all other competitions and contests, including nationally. Start with APME. Then Google reader satisfaction scores, which are among the highest in the company. Then look up web growth data. Then get a clue.
ReplyDeleteYes, lots of awards. A staff working very hard. Yes, Hudson Valley not central NY. Building was sold a couple years ago but still bears the name and looks better. Back on topic, none of this community members plan has been seen except for photos that don't have people in them, just landscapes, flowers and some pretty good animal shots. I doubt we'll see good writing results in any kind of consistency. Hey, isn't writing news what those readers pay the paper to do? So now they have to write it and pay for it too?
ReplyDeleteIf citizen reporters are such a good idea, why wasn't this concept tried five or 10 years ago? Why now?
ReplyDeleteWhat checks and balances will be in place to make sure these stories, photos and videos are balanced, accurate, and free of conflicts of interest?
How will readers be asked to distinguish this content from staff-produced content? Will editors be honest, and say this content is lower quality, and can't be trusted 100%? If so, what message will that send to readers about the paper's overall credibility?
Wow, Jim, this comment by you is rich. You are the poster child for lack of "checks and balances." "Balanced, accurate, and free of conflict of interest." You? Hah!
ReplyDelete"Lower quality?" "Can't be trusted 100%?" Holy shit. You've BECOME Gannett. You even make as much money. Just pull the plug.
Sorry, 11:04. I looked up the 2010-2011 NYSAPA awards. True, Poughkeepsie won a lot of awards. However, they were only competing against two other newspapers in their category: The Glens Falls Post Star and the Utica Observer-Dispatch. Good papers, but exactly a very deep field.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ap.org/newyork/2010-11NYSAPAContestResults.html
And as for the APME award, I won't take away that it was for an excellent and worthy series. But the reporter for the story only writes about mental illness in general, and the prison population in particular. That's it. She won plenty of awards for years in Poughkeepsie, while the rest of the staff was churning out increasing demands for daily copy for the paper and the web. It was a joke among the staff about how she would win an award while the rest of us were doing the work required for a daily paper. For someone who would write three or four stories quarterly, she'd better have been winning awards.
Agreed, 3:26. She is an excellent reporter, but younger folks are being run into the ground and not allowed to develop their skills. And Stu can keep crowing defensively, but the reality is that AP/APME gives out a lot of awards because AP charges newsrooms huge fees for the wire.
ReplyDelete3:26 here. I meant "Not exactly" a deep field.
ReplyDelete