So a handful of locals (myself included) sat on the Inquirer panel about bloggers last night and I passed along your thoughtful comments to Dan Rubin, who writes the Inky’s Blinq. Since we agreed to keep it off the record, no details.
But I can tell you that boy, I wouldn’t want to be a journalist right now. No, wait, let me rephrase that: I wouldn’t want to work as a newspaper staffer right now. Because those people are truly between a rock and a hard place.
The thing is, journalism is hardly dead - clearly, there will always be people who want news (and like me, they want to read it on the train on the way to work). It’s that, in the dead-tree form, it just doesn’t produce the increasingly obscene profits demanded by Wall Street. So when management keeps cutting, cutting, cutting, resources are stretched too thin and you can no longer produce quality coverage. (Assuming you did in the first place, which is a different story entirely.)
I did once again suggest that newspapers form a group on the ASCAP/BMI model, where people pay one yearly subscription fee for online access to an entire group of publications. Then you split up the “royalties” on the basis of hits - and readers only have to remember one login, one password. That’s a win-win.
As to the staff cuts: Well, look at the great work done by people like Josh Marshall, Laura Rozen, Steve Clemons and Christopher Allbritton, and clearly it can be done on a shoestring.
I suppose all that remains to be seen is how much effort people are willing to put into making it happen.
My thoughtful comment was that they hire you.
I hope you remembered to pass that along.
Hey, your royalties idea was truly inspired. Thanks for stirring things up.