Alan Mutter, who regularly offers some of the best analysis of the daily newspaper death-spiral out there, today blogs his advice for the coming online-only Seattle Post-Intelligencer, including: Don’t look back, be different, cop an attitude, crib liberally, go hyper for local, and make them pay.
But before anyone can actually take this advice, a basic question needs to be answered: Will the planned online-only P-I really happen?
With reporter Hector Castro and popular Microsoft blogger Joe Tartakoff both announcing that they won’t be part of any online-only P-I, and rumors of a number of other staffers declining Hearst’s offers, many people (including Sandeep Kaushik) are wondering whether there are even enough willing participants to get the project off the ground.
I’m sure today’s news that Hearst still hasn’t decided what to do about the P-I will add even more fuel to the theory that there just aren’t enough people willing to join the online-only experiment. But, according to my sources the online-only situation is pretty clear: Even with some people spurning Hearst’s offer—which reportedly comes with a hefty pay cut and the loss of many benefits—there are still plenty of staffers willing to say yes given the economy and the state of the newspaper industry.
To me, far more interesting than the question of whether there are enough people accepting Hearst’s offers (there are) is the tale of those who said no and then, later, said yes.
I’ve now heard from multiple sources that the P-I‘s entire staff of web-producers (the people who design and update the paper’s web presence) turned down Hearst’s initial attempt to get them to be part of the online-only project. P-I investigative reporter and data analyst Daniel Lathrop told me yesterday that he’d heard the same thing from a credible source. “I’ve been told that all of the web producers turned it down initially,” he said. “And I am under the impression that they persuaded some people to do it.”
In contrast, I have heard exactly zero reports of P-I reporters turning their nose up at Hearst’s offer and then being “persuaded” to reconsider. So, in yet another sign of the times, it seems that if you’re a reporter and you say no, Hearst’s response is simply, “Next?” On they go down the list until they find a news writer who will say yes to the company’s terms. But if you’re a web producer, well, that’s a different story.
“The reality, to me, is that there about six or seven people in the whole building who know how to operate the web site,” Lathrop said. “There’s a very limited number of people who know how all the pieces fit together… If they want to keep continuity, they need to have a certain number of the web producers stay on.”
of course it’s a different story.
Nobody is indispensable, and certainly not web producers. Sure, in the short term they may have insider knowledge of the system, but anyone can pick that stuff up. It isn’t rocket science.
Now Brian Chin and those who actually program the site, they would have leverage.
*yawn*
Next story…
This is growing increasingly weary and repetitive
enough already…
Heh. Mutter described 70% of the Stranger’s current MO with the Slog. The one key difference is seeking partnerships with blogs and getting op-eds from anyone/everyone, which the Stranger could do very easily if it wants to.
It doesn’t surprise me there’s been more give and take with Hearst and the web producers than with the journalists. The institutional memory of journalists isn’t as dear as the institutional memory of techies. If newbie journalist doesn’t know some trick for getting Tim Burgess to open up, it’ll hurt a story, but it won’t be a show-stopping problem. If a techie doesn’t know how a particular chunk of spaghetti code, it could mean the site goes down until he/she debugs or rewrites… and those minutes or hours are very, very costly to a tech company.
Journalism is a fungible skill. Good journalism is not, but given that Hearst is competing with itself to hire experience (thanks to their idiotic decision to withdraw severance pay from people hired for the online P-I), it looks like fungibility is the way to go. Upside, though, is that you’re going to have a lot of generalists running the show, and I think that could be a good thing. Maybe we’ll see stories with a broader view.
Charge neocons to post comments and let people who buy the print version comment for free.
Besides, it’s easier to outsource the web people.
crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap
maybe it’s easier to outsource web people at some theoretical point, it most certainly isn’t easier to outsource them on day one if you’re aiming for a smooth transition from print + online to online only.
Is the union going to let their people go without a fight?
It’s funny that many of the staffers don’t want to be part of an online-only publication because I can think of plenty of journalism graduates who would jump at that sort of job opportunity.
Yes, myself included.
Leave it to a reporter to think that only six or seven people know how to operate the P-I’s web site.
Hearst is a huge fucking corporation. I would be shocked (shocked!) if on the back end of things, all of their web sites didn’t look and function in much the same way. If the producers in Seattle don’t accept, Hearst could sweeten the deal for producers at any number of their properties and replacements would arrive in a matter of days.
Don’t trust a reporter (data analyst or not) to give you the lowdown on the web site. That’s part of the reason why the P-I is going down the drain.
Also, it would take a shitty, shitty salary for me to turn down a job at the P-I. If you’re into new media, this is a huge opportunity to be at the forefront of online journalism. That said, it could also tank in a matter of months or become a computerized headline aggregator flanked by thumbnails of Jessica Simpson and puppies.