A newsroom source now tells Random Pixels that Herald publisher David Landsberg said as recently as yesterday that the talked about and anticipated job cuts in January may not be necessary. ...
A few brief notes on the current state of affairs in the newspaper business:
A source at the Herald tells me that despite two rounds of buyouts in the space of three months, some staffers are bracing for more bad news.
Executive editor Anders Gyllenhaal has already told his staff that more cuts in the newsroom may be necessary - as early as January. As many as 10 more staffers may lose their jobs.
The newsroom buzz is that with the previous round of cuts taking a toll on reporters, photographers and support staff, some senior editors may now find their heads on the chopping block.
My source tells me that some of them [editors] are sitting at their desks with "thousand-yard stares. They're shell-shocked."
Some Herald staffers are complaining about the Herald's new website re-design. "While it may look like it's new and improved, all they did was put lipstick on a pig," said one newsroom insider. "They did it on the cheap." Another staffer tells me that the design was mandated by the Herald's parent company McClatchy. The source says that all McClatchy papers will soon have similar looking sites.
Another Herald source tells me that the Herald's Broward bureau in Pembroke Pines has become a ghost town. He reports that many days he's the only person in the once-busy building. "It gives me a creepy feeling," says the staffer.
And here's something that Herald executive editor Anders Gyllenhaal is no doubt paying attention to:
While newspapers will never get back subscribers who have migrated to the web, they're trying desperate measures to hold on to subscribers they still have.
Tampa Tribune executive editor Janet Coats thought she'd come up with a sure fire way to re-invent her paper. Coats decided that what her readers wanted was a more compact and condensed version of the Tribune. The problem is she never asked the readers what they wanted.
The Tribune rolled out a one section paper back on Oct. 6.
Less than a week after launching the slimmed down version of the paper, Coats had to apologize to readers and announce that the Tribune will it resume publishing a multi-section paper.
The Tribune is in a no-win situation. It competes with the St. Petersburg Times for readers. The St. Petersburg Times, which is considered one of the best newspapers in the country, outclasses the inferior Tribune in circulation and and quality. The only way the Tribune can beat the St. Pete Times is to give away a $20 bill with every paper they sell. Giving readers less of a newspaper is not the answer, as editor Coats has painfully learned.
The incident just proves that some people who run newspapers have no idea what readers want.
The McCain campaign’s recent angry tone and sharply personal attacks on Senator Barack Obama appear to have backfired and tarnished Senator John McCain more than their intended target, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll has found. [...] .... the poll found that more voters see Mr. McCain as waging a negative campaign than Mr. Obama. Six in 10 voters surveyed said that Mr. McCain had spent more time attacking Mr. Obama than explaining what he would do as president; by about the same number, voters said Mr. Obama was spending more of his time explaining than attacking.
Ol' Cranky certainly isn't helping himself with performances like this either. Perhaps after the election is over, whomever was responsible for allowing John McCain to make these sorts of appearances before video cameras can explain why they thought it was a good idea! But by all means, let's have more like these!
"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."
"It is not truth that matters, but victory."
... If there's heaven or a hell or an after-life in another universe, then there's no doubt that Lee Atwater is looking down on the McCain campaign of recent days and smiling.
Atwater was a Republican strategist who perfected a particularly virulent form of dirty politics that he used on behalf of various Republican candidates including George H.W. Bush.
And while Atwater didn't author the above quotes - they were uttered by another politician - he no doubt, knew of them and more than likely adhered to them in principle.
Eleanor Randolph of the New York Times wrote back on Sept. 19 that Atwater knew how to "get inside peoples’ heads." Randolph explains:
One of the cruelest examples of this maneuver involved former State Senator Tom Turnipseed, a South Carolina Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1980. As a youth, Mr. Turnipseed had shock therapy for depression, which he talked about on occasion.
Mr. Atwater, who was working for the Republican, was not sympathetic. He went around the state telling people that the Democratic candidate had once “been hooked up to jumper cables.” No matter how much Mr. Turnipseed talked about education or crime or dirty tricks after that, voters only saw the jumper cables.
For the 1988 campaign to elect then-Vice President Bush, the indelible image that helped defeat Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts was a black man named Willie Horton. Willie Horton committed rape while on furlough from a Massachusetts prison under a program that was actually started by another governor, a Republican.
Despite his public denials that he had anything to do with an anti-Dukakis commercial featuring Mr. Horton, this film has Mr. Atwater encouraging an outside group to spread the word. The tactic worked. Mr. Atwater and friends managed to turn Willie Horton’s face into the only thing some voters could remember about the Democratic nominee.
Atwater died in 1991, but as we've seen in recent days, the Atwater style of politics is very much alive.
John McCain and Sarah Palin have trotted out the big lie and smear politics, instigated no doubt, by their campaign advisors who have probably been doing some reading up on Lee Atwater.
“This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America. We see America as the greatest force for good in this world. If we can be that beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy and can live in a country that would allow intolerance in the equal rights that again our military men and women fight for and die for for all of us. Our opponent though, is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country?”
What better way to distract your followers from the real issues and your own shortcomings as a candidate, than by telling a lie and then repeating it over and over again until they start believing it?
Palin's ugly rhetoric and lies became so intense last week, that some of her supporters on Florida's west coast felt obliged to match her hate speech one ugly word for another with threats shouted from the audience against Obama and some members of the media.
And even though McCain and Palin never said some of the more outrageous things that their supporters are screaming at rallies, they planted the seeds of hate and pollinated them when they sprouted.
Some of their followers have even resorted to making up their own lies. One woman actually believes that Obama is "an Arab."
John McCain, to his credit, has finally decided to scale back the attacks: "I have to tell you — he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared" of "as president of the United States."
With less than a month to go before the election, let's see if McCain and Palin can stick to the issues.
Oh, by the way, who uttered those two quotes at the top of this post? Not a Republican, although they could have been.
The world economy's in the dumper, we're stuck in a war with no end in sight, people are going broke just filling up their gas tanks and ten of thousands of Americans are being forced out of their homes.
So what are the folks at Fox News and a Republican twinkie named Andrea Tantaros upset about?
The fact that Newsweek magazine didn't Photoshop Sarah Palin's ultra-close-up photo on the cover of the current issue.
Tantaros thinks it outrageous that Newsweek makes Barack Obama look so gorgeous on their covers but not poor Sarah. Hell, they even gave Barack a halo on a recent cover, she whines!
Here's Tantaros on Fox News complaining about Newsweek's "slap in the face" at Sarah Palin. She uses the term "a slap in the face" no fewer than six times. This is a woman who clearly isn't getting enough time off.
Tantaros apparently has no problems with Palin sliming Obama by using rhetoric that borders on hate speech.
But she does have a problem with Newsweek not using the cloning tool on Sarah's pics.
What a lot of these complainers don't understand is that Newsweek is news magazine and not a fashion magazine. And Photoshopping newsphotos is a "no-no."
Who cares? It's not Palin's facial hair or large pores or moles that scare me. It's her Neanderthal-like political views and the fact that she has absolutely no business running for the second highest office in the land!
... This Saturday George W. Bush will have just 100 days remaining in office.
To mark the occasion I slapped together a poster celebrating some of the more memorable moments of his presidency. It was hard to choose...there were so many.
It's just my little way of saying "Thanks for everything Mr. President!"
As America inches closer to the day when George Bush packs his bags and heads back to Texas - 103 days and counting - it's only fitting that we take a serious look back at some of the promises he made and judge whether or not he kept them.
I'm sure C-Span and the Newshour on PBS will be doing in-depth analyses of Bush's eight years in office. But who has time to sit around and listen to, what will no doubt, be a bunch of talking heads?
I'd rather hear it directly from the man himself! And all of it in under 2 minutes!
The political staff at The Late Show with David Letterman has put together this video compilation of Bush's achievements. How did he do? You be the judge.
OK, OK. That wasn't really all that serious. But the video below is a little more introspective and scholarly...just like George Bush.
