Brutal article on Creative Loafing

[leander]

Thanks for the interesting insight, JC. I don’t know much about the paper business and it’s always interesting to hear the inside scoop (ugh! - excuse the pun).

[Green_Cymbeline]

@Jonathan_Chance

One thing that HAS to stop: I read in another story about CL that one of there papers had several ‘Senior Writers’ each working for 4-6 weeks on major feature stories. A writer was complaining that this is coming to a half. Well, it HAS to. You need to be able to provide good, clean copy in less than a week on complex subjects for your readers. The old days are done and those who can’t adapt should go do something else. Each of my writers (four spread over two markets, not counting the columnists) produce 2-6 stories per week of between 500-2000 words each. At one point my Managing Editor was producing 8000 words per week on hard subjects to cover. There’s no room for weeklies in a newspaper designed to survive.

Only 2-6 stores per week?! Heh. When I was a reporter for a weekly paper, we had to produce 6-10 stories a week plus crap like community calendars, etc. We were a chain of 10+ weeklies covering the Northern Virginia region, and each paper was filled cover-to-cover with local stories. There were no wire stories at all. It was a good paper. That was almost 10 years ago now, and the quality of this particular paper has suffered as they have cut back on staff. Each individual locality/town had it’s own dedicated reporter, plus we had special reporters such as political, regional, sports, food, real estate, etc. Then they started cutting back and making reporters cover multiple areas, which meant less local-specific content.

[Cicero]

I’m going to buy the rights to SDMB for $1 and run it on a Commodore 64.

[Scissorjack]

@Cicero

I’m going to buy the rights to SDMB for $1 and run it on a Commodore 64.

Yeah, we keep hearing about the upgrade.

[Cicero]

@Scissorjack

Yeah, we keep hearing about the upgrade.

Darn- you saw through me…

[sailor]

@Jonathan_Chance

There’s no room for weeklies in a newspaper designed to survive.

I don’t get this. There are plenty of weekly magazines doing OK. Do you mean they should be monthly? Or daily?

[Lynn_Bodoni]

@Cicero

I’m going to buy the rights to SDMB for $1 and run it on a Commodore 64.

I’m willing to donate my old C128 for the cause. It’s not doing anything else at the moment. I do have a lot of fond memories of making a move in a game, or swapping disks, and then picking up my crocheting and working a few stitches while I waited.

[Jonathan_Chance]

@sailor

I don’t get this. There are plenty of weekly magazines doing OK. Do you mean they should be monthly? Or daily?

That would be typing like an idiot. Sorry about that.

“There is no room for ‘six week rotations’ in a newspaper designed to survive.”

[Some_FNG]

@nyctea scandiaca

Only 2-6 stores per week?! Heh. When I was a reporter for a weekly paper, we had to produce 6-10 stories a week plus crap like community calendars, etc. We were a chain of 10+ weeklies covering the Northern Virginia region, and each paper was filled cover-to-cover with local stories. There were no wire stories at all. It was a good paper. That was almost 10 years ago now, and the quality of this particular paper has suffered as they have cut back on staff. Each individual locality/town had it’s own dedicated reporter, plus we had special reporters such as political, regional, sports, food, real estate, etc. Then they started cutting back and making reporters cover multiple areas, which meant less local-specific content.

:eek:
If it’s the chain I’m thinking of, I worked there was well, but in the early 90’s.

Are you talking about the Reston/Herndon/Burke/Springfield/Vienna Times group?
They were good papers and absolutely killed the local competition (The Connection group) when it came to community news. I know that when I was there we operated under the premise that “we take up where the Post leaves off”.

Or are you talking about something else? I left the area in 1995 and haven’t kept up with the region weeklies that come and go in those parts.

[Green_Cymbeline]

@Some_FNG

:eek:
If it’s the chain I’m thinking of, I worked there was well, but in the early 90’s.

Are you talking about the Reston/Herndon/Burke/Springfield/Vienna Times group?
They were good papers and absolutely killed the local competition (The Connection group) when it came to community news. I know that when I was there we operated under the premise that “we take up where the Post leaves off”.

Or are you talking about something else? I left the area in 1995 and haven’t kept up with the region weeklies that come and go in those parts.

Yes! That’s exactly the paper I am talking about. It was my first job out of college, from 1999-2000. It was a really fun place, and I thought we did a really good job covering the local community in-depth. I was a reporter covering the Centreville/Chantilly beat - were you a reporter too?

[Silver_Fire]

@featherlou

See you all at Teemings!

Having never been there, I clicked on your link.

I got a page load error, network timeout, six times.

I lol’d.

Yes, I would like to trade one pile of shit message board for another pile of shit message board. Awesome.

[LonesomePolecat]

@Jonathan_Chance

Some of us are broken down, middle-aged professionals.

And some of us are just broken down and middle aged.

[silenus]

The rest of us are just broke.

[Cat_Whisperer]

@Silver_Fire

Having never been there, I clicked on your link.

I got a page load error, network timeout, six times.

I lol’d.

Yes, I would like to trade one pile of shit message board for another pile of shit message board. Awesome.

Hm, not exactly a ringing endorsement.

[Strassia]

For some reason I confused Creative Loafing with Power Loafing. That really makes a difference.

Jonathan

[Beware_of_Doug]

@Dijon_Warlock

Agreed on all of those, but there’s also (but not only) content to be considered. Historical value (remember NYC Dopers’ postings on and after 9-11?), factual value (as ignorance fighters, this place is a veritable mini-Wikipedia), as well as entertainment value (The Zit Thread, Very Vaguely Creepy threads, If Someone Else had written LOTR, to name/pararepresent but a few). This place is and has been a cultural vortex of what is best and worst of what goes through people’s minds; and as such, has value in that respect as well. To reduce it to mere financial numbers may (regretfully) be necessary, but I would hope that whatever Powers-That-Be realize how short-sighted that is.

In a market that understands “value” in ever narrower and less reflective ways, shortsightedness is coming to be merely good management.

History has no “value,” facts not concerned with the movement of numbers through spreadsheets have no “value,” and entertainment has “value” only when it concerns promotable, protectable product.

[leander]

Here is the reply from CL writer Mara Shalhoup:

http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/freshloaf/2008/11/28/annals-of-bizarro-sugg-dishes-on-the-loaf-in-the-sunday-paper/

Love him or hate him, former CL Senior Editor John Sugg never fails to get lips a-flappin’ with his firebrand columns — particularly one published today, under the headline “Creative Loafing’s death spiral.”

<snip>

My first concern is that Sugg used his column to criticize newspapers, including the Loaf, for “hanging on to printed editions long after consumers were decidedly digital.” Basically, he’s calling out CL for putting so much of its faith (at least in the past) in its print edition. Fair enough. Yet Sugg failed to disclose that he and a crew of fellow talented journalists are currently trying to secure funding for an online-only news organization.

He and the organization arguably could benefit from spreading the online-only gospel. That, to me, is a conflict of interest — one that warranted a full disclosure. I told him so, and he agreed.

My other issue had not to do with the possibility that Sugg might profit from what he printed but, rather, that he didn’t explicitly state that he’d lost money as a result of what he described as “the erratic and impetuous” managerial style of Creative Loafing Inc.’s CEO Ben Eason. Sugg did disclose in the column that he’s a Creative Loafing Inc. shareholder, but he didn’t outright state that Eason’s supposed missteps were a blow to his own finances — or that he might harbor anger toward Eason because of that financial hit.

[leander]

Also something which may be of interest:

http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/saying_goodbye_to_former_creative_loafing_editor_ken_edelstein/Content?oid=629201&cb=aff04e47f76683b542dbc403ee3c07cf#readerComments

It’s safe to say that Creative Loafing owes its reputation as the city’s smartest, edgiest, most endearing rag to Ken Edelstein, who up until last week was the paper’s editor for a decade.

The man lived and breathed the Loaf. From his disheveled mess of a cubicle, he’d impart his detailed recollection of a state Senate race circa 1998, or his vision for an Arts & Entertainment mega-section, or his adoration for a clever turn of phrase, a perfectly composed photo, and a well-crafted blog post. He was eager to talk, longwindedly at times, about the philosophy of newsgathering and his strategy for drawing readers to the Web. He obsessed on the grammar of every sentence he edited, calling out writers for their overuse of gerunds and each superfluous “that.”

[PunditLisa]

@RTFirefly

An alternative would be for us Dopers to form a corporation (a nonprofit, I’d expect) to buy and run the board, should push come to shove.

I’m in. Can I pick my title? I’m thinking “Queen of the Damned” has a nice ring to it.

[E-Sabbath]

We can put on the show in the barn!