BOL Round Table

It's never good when anyone loses their job, especially on a massive scale, and this is a permanent change in the entire journalism industry, so it feels even more significant...

Peter Finney fired from Times-Picayune. Been employed there since 1945

WOW.....

Very, very sad situation.

They also fired Brett Anderson, who is the most respected food critic in the nation. Very sad situation.

Hahahaha!!!! I see what just happened.

Huge mistake on their part IMO. Now he can either go work for a big paper that's still going okay (like in New York) or he's going to get picked up by an online source. The latter is hilariously ironic, because the TP could have kept him on to do work online. I can't figure out if some of these newspaper owners/runners still don't feel confident in the internet or are simply against it.

Funny, but this isn't related to the economy. Its hard to hear about large layoffs for any reason, but this is most similar to layoffs in the horse-drawn buggy industry as the automobile gained in popularity. Changes in technology create new industries at the expense of the old ones.

You still need designers and proofreaders on the web. It's not like they're just slapping up Word .docs on blank white pages.

Now, you realize just how so many people at Kodak Camera (AND FILM) felt (some there for better than 40 years)....people at Polaroid.
The long-term forecast for the publication of "printed books" and currrent Libraries is just as bleak.

I could go on and on,,,,"Incandescent Light Bulbs".......

The buzz words that are bantered about for all this, of course, is "TECHNOLOGY AND PROGESS"

Memories of the Birmingham News, The Birmingham Post herald (and so many others) as wonderful, magical newspapers go back well over 60 years for me, now...some of the 'long gone' great, great sports writers that hold a special place in my memories.

Not in everything, but in some ways I have alwasy been somewhat of a 'dinosaur', myself, in my personal preferences, although ironically, I'm also happen to be heavily involved with the sciences and technologies that made many of these changes, possible...helped bring them about, successfully. So, as a consequence, my emotions run mixed with just a twinge of guilt, too, for having made my livlihood this way).

On a side note, I've always preferred great newspapers to 20 second TV News "surface only" 'sound bites' because of the in-depth and 'real meat' of a story that good printed media generally provided versus TV News that could never ever provide that level of detail. However, I was also very saddened over the years to see the steady erosion and journalistic degradation of pure news, by more and more "editorialized versions" of news stories on the front pages rather than strict reporting of the story, itself...completely foreign to traditonal journalistic rules about keeping editorial opinions / platforms strictly on the EDITORIAL PAGE (ONLY) where they rightfully belong!!!!.

The bottom line is that we all should mourn the past some, if only to validate us as human beings, but have to go forward...SOMEHOW ADAPT! Learn, retrain when necessary, accept the conditions which we can't change...coping with life.

People are not buying newspapers because it's a outdated format, not because they cant afford to buy them. Did Rush Limbaugh teach you that?

Well we will have around 100 new bloggers now.