Laid Off Rocky Mountain News Employees Don’t Get It

12:04 pm EST April 23rd, 2009 | Media | 3 Comments

They parted ways with an investor for a new news site, in part because they wanted a staff of 30 and 50,000 paid subscribers. For all the (deserved) blame going to corporate newspaper owners, the journalists are also not without sin. Too many of them think that they need giant staffs, several bajillion layers of editors, etc.

The sad part of it is, I bet a lot of people in Colorado would be really into reading a well-written group blog from former Rocky writers. They can get one for free at wordpress.com or blogger.com.

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3 Responses to “Laid Off Rocky Mountain News Employees Don’t Get It”

  1. drinkof says:
    April 23, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    I could be wrong, but I think you’ve misread, or are reading too much into, the story. The only solid takeaway is that they couldn’t come to terms with one set of investors. They are looking for other investors.

    Why does this necessarily fall on the journalists? The fact that journalists as a group may fail to understand current realities doesn’t mean THIS group has to come to terms with THIS group of investors.

  2. Oliver Willis says:
    April 23, 2009 at 12:52 pm

    The parameters the reporters are bringing to the table seem mighty unrealistic.

  3. James H says:
    April 23, 2009 at 5:08 pm

    I would think you’d want two or three layers of editors, even at a small Web operation.

    Layer 1 would be the top editor. His job would be coordinating coverage, leading the newsroom, etc. He’d be more of a manager than anything else.

    Layer 2 would be a coordinating editor who handles a lot of the day to day supervision of writers, assigning stories, yelling at reporters, etc. This editor would be permanently attached to his chair and have a bottle of whiskey at his desk.

    Layer 3 would be the copy editor, who is responsible for being the last read on any story before it gets published, check some of the basic facts in the article, etc., etc.

    That said, you can double up a lot of these duties.

    Layer 1 (top editor) could also be in charge of overall management duties at the newspaper, including hiring and firing, etc., etc.

    Layer 2 (coordinating editor) might himself be a senior reporter/writer.

    Layer 3 (copy editor) would also be in charge of publishing stories to the Web and sifting through wire material, if any.

    As a general rule, you want two people to look at any story before it goes out to the rest of the world. However, those two people could be a copy editor and a supervising editor, or a copy editor and one of the reporters.