They Shoot Editors, Don't They?
(Media • Verbatim)
But at the Dallas Morning News, they torture them first.
Yesterday the newspaper that once provided watchdog journalism across the state of Texas began turning supervision of what’s left of a decimated newsroom over to the advertising department.
Below, the Morning News editor outlines Reason #43, Why I Am Ecstatic I No Longer Work As A Newspaper Journalist:
From: Mong, Bob
Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2009 4:41 PM
To: Everyone…
Subject: Memo from Bob Mong and Cyndy Carr…Colleagues:
Today we are launching a new business segment structure as the next step toward becoming the most comprehensive and trusted partner for local businesses in attracting and retaining customers and continuing to generate important, relevant content for our consumers.
To better align with our clients’ needs, we will be organized around eleven business and content segments with similar marketing and consumer profiles including: sports, health/education, entertainment, travel/luxury, automotive, real estate, communications, preprints/grocery, recruitment, retail/finance, and SMB/Interactive.
Each segment will be led by a General Manager (GM), a newly-defined role, each reporting to Cyndy Carr, charged with analyzing and growing the business by developing solutions that meet consumer needs and maximize results for our clients. Their responsibilities will include sales and business development. They will also be working closely with news leadership in product and content development.
In the Sports and Entertainment segments, the senior news editors will report directly to the GM while retaining a strong reporting relationship to the editor and managing editor. These collaborations will bring new products that consumers want to the market more rapidly. We are proceeding knowing and trusting each other’s distinct roles and responsibilities in the same way our News leadership and our Publisher have worked collaboratively for years.
This business/news integration is a progressive step and is strongly supported by the news leaders of both the Sports and Entertainment segments:
“As a segment, we have a lot of advantages usually associated with a start-up,” said Bob Yates, deputy managing editor and Executive Sports Editor. “We should be able to move much more quickly to take advantage of opportunities. That comes from having greater autonomy that gives us the freedom to develop both advertising and content solutions.”
“As a journalist who has participated in many new product launches, I’m excited about the idea of working with a business partner on an arts and entertainment segment,” added Lisa Kresl, deputy managing editor for Lifestyles. “Our high quality, credible content will reach new audiences in a variety of formats.”
The new segment leadership team is comprised of a very talented and accomplished group of business professionals:
Entertainment and Travel/Luxury Segments: Tracy Martin Taylor is the GM for the Entertainment and Travel/Luxury segments. As part of the new GM role, Tracy will be responsible for overseeing content. Tracy will continue her role as Quick Publisher and assume the role of FD Luxe Publisher. Prior to joining The News in July, she was in sales management at Clear Channel Radio and marketing at Wherehouse Music.
Sports and Health/Education Segments: Rich Alfano is the newest member of our management team. Rich worked for Times Mirror Magazines and served as President of Yachting, Saltwater Sportsman and Golf Magazine. He has most recently served as Senior Vice President/General Manager and SVP/Strategic Marketing for Practitioner’s Publishing Co./Thomson Reuters. His professional success and experience in several industries makes him ideally suited to lead two of our high-growth segments. …
As The Dallas Morning News approaches its 125th anniversary in 2010, our business stands at a critical crossroads. Our success depends on employing bold strategies to evolve our organization: our home delivery pricing strategy (on which Jim and John updated us on Monday), our continued dedication and investment in important and relevant journalism that makes a difference in our community and the ongoing development of our product portfolio have all played a role in changing our approach to how we do business.
This restructure and strategic integration with news, along with the many other strategies we’ve put into place this year to better serve our clients and consumers, position us for significant growth and stability as we head into the new year.
Cyndy Carr Bob Mong
SVP/Sales Editor
Uh-huh. The quotes above totally convince me that the Morning News sports and entertainment editors have been waiting their whole careers for the opportunity to have their every move second-guessed by a radio advertising sales manager.
Note that “clients’ needs” and “readers’ needs” are not even close to the same thing. As usual among big-newspaper executives, the perceived importance of readers’ needs is approximately that of a rat’s ass.
Boy, daily newsroom budget meetings probably will be a real blast when the new ad new bosses stand up and ask exactly how they’re supposed to “maximize results for our clients” given what the editors are mistaking for the day’s top news stories.
And you can bet really big money the Dallas Morning News will be doing way more investigative business reporting than ever before under this new organizational structure, especially if, say, an advertiser car dealership is caught in, say, major fraud.
→ B.Dunn, Dec 03, 2009, 07 44 pm
But won’t things improve if the Obama administration decide to intervene to “save the newspapers” like many of us hope they will. Hopefully, he will step in to save the newspapers. It has to be their only hope.
— Robert Williamson Dec 4, 06:12 am #
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