It's a sad day for Indianapolis media and for the arts as massive layoffs gut the Indianapolis Star.
Whitney Smith: gone.
Chris Lloyd: gone.
Susan Guyett: gone.
Abe Aamidor: gone.
My thoughts and best wishes go out to these and other talented former Star writers, editors and designers.
More details here and here. Look for more in today's IBJ Daily.
Your thoughts?
Whitney Smith: gone.
Chris Lloyd: gone.
Susan Guyett: gone.
Abe Aamidor: gone.
My thoughts and best wishes go out to these and other talented former Star writers, editors and designers.
More details here and here. Look for more in today's IBJ Daily.
Your thoughts?
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OK, Lou - More pressure for you! Looks like you'll be a lone voice in the world of local print media critics.
Please IBJ! Keep Lou around!!
('Sorry: I can't be any more articulate than that right now. This just really sucks.)
Hope Baugh
www.IndyTheatreHabit.com
http://www.ibj.com/html/detail_page_Full.asp?content=25890
Also, I've heard from people who work at the Star that it is not an unprofitable operation but rather the Star's profits are simply not large enough for Gannett's corporate management.
And, what's to become of arts coverage? Isn't it ironic that a business publication may have more robust coverage of the arts and entertainment?
As Cicero said, O tempore--o mores!
dh
Meanwhile, it's down to IBJ and NUVO to tell me what's going on in the arts. At least they're still managed by folks who give a rat's hindquarters about their own city.
Put a little more time in your articles (like IBJ has) and it won't come to Layoffs and Firings to this extent. (for the most part)
And, for befriending me, a would-be theatre writer.
I am confident that you will land on your feet, but Indianapolis will be the poorer for not being able to read your articles.
Hope Baugh
www.IndyTheatreHabit.com
Having been in that situation, I know what a brutal, conflicted time it is. To find the words--the right words--at a time like that is yet another testament to the quality of writer being lost at the Star.
--Lou
Shoot, I'm crying now as I write this on a break at my day job.
I'm proud to be a blogger, but bloggers aren't enough, any more than adjunct faculty are enough to make an excellent university program, nor any more than Google is enough to make a public library.
(By the way, I know this is a tangent, but it's the PUBLIC in public libraries that make them worth keeping, not the books part, or even the Internet access. It's the fact that public libraries make Internet access and other sources of information and stories available to everyone in a democratic society.)
More later, probably. My meeting is about to reconvene.
Hope Baugh
www.IndyTheatreHabit.com
I was crying earlier because I had read the elegant post by Chris Lloyd on Ruth Holladay's blog and I agree with Lou that it's a shame to be losing Lloyd's skill as a writer.
Yes, newspapers have to reinvent themselves, but it's not the paper that's the important part of a newspaper, it's the news.
Or, to borrow a passion keyword from blogspeak: it's not the online format, it's the CONTENT.
Gannett seems to be cutting the only things that will keep them in business for the long run: their professional content creators. I understand about greed and wanting a larger profit margin. I don't think it's the way to live one's life, necessarily, but I get it. So...isn't it bizarre that Gannet is making decisions that seem guaranteed to put itself out of business?
Or am I naive in thinking that they even want to be in the news business?
It is their darn website that is actually holding them back. Brian mentioned how long it takes to load. I stopped trying to use indy.com a long time ago because I could never find Whitney Smith's reviews, or any other theatre reviews for that matter. I got so that I was only reading his stuff via the links that other theater people pointed me to. All I could find on my own on that site was calendar info and hundreds (thousands!) of photos of drunken tattooed people with their arms around each other.
Now I'm sorry that I didn't try harder to find and read every single review and the other real articles - and the ads accompanying them - because Gannett probably based its firing decisions on the lack of click-throughs to those.
But I know I couldn't have been the only one who got frustrated with that website. The real problem was not my lack of searching skills but the fact that Gannett didn't know (and apparently still doesn't know) how to make the transition from local newsPAPER to online local NEWSpaper.
And now all of those creators, and worse, all of Indianapolis, has to suffer because of Gannett's bad decisions.
Bleah.
Back to my meeting...
Hope Baugh
www.IndyTheatreHabit.com
http://ae.ibj.com/blogshell.asp?p=350