We serve no whine before its time
: Tim Porter tells newspaper old fogies (read: Barrie Hartman) to stop whining:
…he’s wrong that penurious publishers are to blame for readership woes.
It’s time to drive a stake through this excuse, quit the whining and deal with the real problem – atrophied newsroom cultures that discourage innovation, don’t reward risk-taking and drive out the too many of the best and brightest younger journalists, all of whom entered the profession aware of the paltry pay scale, with rigid hierarchies.
There’s another business issue to deal with: added competition from the Internet and consolidating retail are affecting revenue and bottom lines more than any bean-counters. This is a business.
Tim’s right: Whining won’t solve anything. But the Web might solve a few problems if they’re viewed creatively as new sources of information and content.
