Somewhat OT: Maese, Ordine, Steele, Everyone Laid Off

Very sad. Without professional jounalists, who goes and gets the information we talk about on blogs?

Blogs are great, but bloggers don’t interview the players and managers, etc.

They even laid off the photgraphers. It feels like I’ve seen Liz Malby and Doug Kapustin’s bylines on every Orioles photo for years.

but I don’t think they do what print journalism did in its heyday in terms of having the resources to dig and hold people accountable.

Again, I’ll have to disagree.

Going online will make the material accessible to more people, and although this may lead to an increase in sensationalism, I think interviewees will still be held just as accountable because of the increase in circulation.

The power of the media is increasing every single day as the world becomes increasingly more digital; these guys aren’t going away.

The decline of newspapers hurts me as much as the next guy, but really, it’s nothing but nostalgia.

As an out-of-towner, if it weren’t for the internet, I couldn’t tell you what the name of the Baltimore newspaper was. Because of the internet, I read the sports section every day during baseball season and many days during the off season. I guess I’m the problem, ripping off the paper as a non-paying customer.

(A large media company like the Trib is uniquely positioned to sell an online subscription service that covers many different markets. I would be willing to pay (a small amount) in order to read online news content, but only if it covered a wide range of sources and subjects. IOW, I wouldn’t pay for one newspaper, but I would for a lot of them. )

Because of their inability to transition from selling ink stained pages to just the information on them, the source and quality of that information are going to go seriously downhill. This isn’t just about jobs, it’s about information consolidation. While what a blogger writes might be interesting and sometimes more in-depth than what a Guild writer would produce, a microscopic percentage of them actually get information from the source. Sometimes they are a source, but most times they don’t even know what the real source is. (Oh, here’s a link on boingboing, which got picked up from slashdot, which found it on Bob’s ranty blog)

Unfortunately, monetizing the internet involves flashing classmates ads, fake IQ tests, and other garbage. The advertising model on the internet fucking sucks, and I can say that from experience. I’m going to go click a bunch of ads that I have no idea of buying anything from or even paying any attention to in protest.

I think that just about does it for me with The Sun. I know that some of the names mentioned for the sports layoffs aren’t among the most popular here, but I usually found something worth reading in them.

Rick Maese was an enjoyable read when he wasn’t trying too hard to be funny – and was the only columnist within 5 years of age of myself (well, not that I know how old he is, but he looked young). Amidst the writings of David Steele I found an interesting window into things that, growing up in white suburbia, I’ll simply never know from personal experience. Bill Ordine had such a wide range of experience that the stories he could tell were varied and interesting. Even Ray Frager, whose Mr. Flip persona was ridiculously stupid, got the axe – but his sports media-focused stuff was actually pretty cool, a roundup of amusing gaffes and tidbits on broadcasts.

I mean, you open up an actual print copy of the sports section now and there’s basically nothing in there but ads. The box score’s shrunk as much as they can manage, every other baseball game plus standings are squeezed onto one page. They have cut all the stuff I found worth reading, and now even some of the more interesting blog contributors are out too so why even go to the website? It has nothing to do with sports, but the “You Don’t Say” blog of professional pedant John McIntyre was something that always made me think. I am armed with more knowledge about language for having read it.

Baltimo is probably right that a lot of the pain is simply for the sake of nostalgia. Most of us grew up reading the newspaper for our sports fix or whatever else and that’s pretty much gone in the digital age. It makes me sad to think of how I’d pore over the box scores while eating breakfast before school and that experience will basically never be duplicated by kids any more.

It’s sad too because for those of us who are locals, it’s yet another declining Baltimore institution. I mean, people gave some crap about the fifth season of The Wire because it was like Simon’s hatchet job against the Sun, but it was also true, and stuff like this shows it. Telling people they’re fired while they’re covering a baseball game? I mean, come on. You could be proud of The Sun in its heyday – its look at not just Baltimore but the rest of the world too. Now it’s all just AP or NYT wire stories I can read in any paper anywhere, with a very small number of exceptions.

What bugs me about it even more, though, is that there’s surely a legitimate case to be made for streamlining. Yesterday’s Orioles game, a Wednesday afternoon game with an announced paid crowd of 14,203 had at least six people there from The Sun. I base this on comments that “three writers and a photographer” at the game were laid off – plus Schmuck (blogger) and Zrebiec (game story) and probably at least one more I don’t know about who were not laid off. From the outside that sure seems like a relatively charmed life. I guess it had to come crashing down sooner or later.

I was sitting next to Rick Maese and behind David Steele when they received the news – on their cell phones. Unreal. Or surreal, as you put it. Very depressing day. And I’m friends with many others who were let go over the last 48 hours. I have no idea how they plan to put out a newspaper on Calvert St., or if that’s even the intent anymore. - Roch

Pretty fucking shitty to fire people over the phone while they are at the fucking stadium. Jesus. Have some respect and do it in person and in private. That’s ridiculous.

It takes over two hours to receive the entire text of the newspaper over the phone, and with an hourly use charge of five dollars, the new “telepaper” won’t be much competition for the twenty-cent street edition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCTn4FljUQ

players talk because they want to be heard

but the sun will keep covering the Os….. trust me …. it’s on of the paper’s profit centers

There was a twing of feeling to support the paper as best I could but I realize the paper is owned by the Chicago Tribune and they have cut staff at the Sun for some time now. I guess I have to think about myself and my wallet. Just like they have at the Tribune. It is a damn shame.

but the print media, at least how it has been operated, is on its deathbed and has been for a long time. Newspapers don’t make money selling their content…they never have. Its all about ad revenue. Why pay to take an ad out in the classified section when its free on the internet. Furthermore, how can a classified section even begin to compete with a search engine. If a paper can’t sell ad space, it can’t make money. What infuriates me is how those in charge continue to slash content for ad space, even though they are getting less and less money for that space. Cutting content only serves to alienate and lose readership, which in turns means less ad revenue, causing more content to get cut. I get it for free, through UMBC and to be honest, its like a fucking local version of USA Today now. I don’t even read it anymore, I just pick it up to line my parrot’s cage. I’m sure it was tough when horse carriage factories started closing up, but lets be honest, we aren’t going to revert back to the “good old” days. We need to either adapt to a changing world, or get out of the way. Its cold, heartless, cruel…but that is the reality.

well, this just sucks.