Sunday, June 3, 2007

San Jose Mercury Newsroom Gets the Sack: Another One Bites the Dust

Can the Growing Hoards of Pink-Slipped Journalists Reinvent the Wheel?
"Another journalist hired is another scoop wired." -2Truthy


That giant sucking sound that some of us heard around here the other day was NOT the typical P-3 Orion Squadron sound of ageing jets without mufflers flying too close to the rooftops for comfort. Nor was it Valleywag throwing another kegger... Rather, The San Jose Mercury News laid off 60 newsroom reporters this week.

They must have laid off too many as apparently, there wasn’t even one staffer handy to report this breaking news on the front page (or anywhere that I could find) of their own newspaper!

So guess what? I found out first by reading the Huffpo, brought to us by the indefatigable Arianna Huffington, who with her infamous blog has mastered the art of disseminating influence: societal influence, which is not for sale, and commercial influence, which is. Now that this newsworthy outlet has signed on a few Daddy Warbucks for advertisers and is playing in the Big Leagues, wouldn’t it be something if they picked up half of these MN pink-slipped guys to have scooped the hit job first? Just a thought.

Like 2Truthy always says, “another journalist hired is another scoop wired!”

While “mums the word” is the party line around the MN executive suite on commenting who got the axe with and without parachutes, the following remark describes the prevailing mood:

"Sixty is huge; oh my God!" Mercury News business reporter Elise Ackerman exclaimed.

I guess this means Elise is still sticking around for now, but they had some fine reporters, like Dan Gillmor who, in my humble opinion, was the MN’s top dog and after he bailed, the whole rag has been more or less floating down the River Styx.

To other favorites like Mike Cassidy and Sue Hutchison, who hopefully managed to dodge the bullet this time -- best of luck to you all!

-2Truthy

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1843035/posts
http://www.umsystem.edu/upress/fall2004/meyer.htm

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