More on H-S cuts: Offen to news, Goad out, Childress to CH... and McCann files news?

Some more info is dribbling out about last week's Herald-Sun cuts:

• The metro editor position -- held by Dan Way before he was sent to Chapel Hill in a swap for Neil Offen -- is axed. Offen's moving to a reporting beat, with managing editor Nancy Wykle taking over management of all news and feature reporters. (For what it's worth, Offen's produced some pretty good writing in recent months.)
• Besides Laura Collins, Herald-Sun losses include reporter Matt Goad, who just got a shout-out on the op-ed page for his participation in a three-part series on East Durham a few weeks back; Goad's a layoff victim. So too is longtime H-S'er Jack Threadgill.
• Gregory Childress, whose byline popped up increasingly in recent weeks in H-S news articles, moves to the Chapel Hill Herald, which lost (one layoff, one resignation) two reporters.
• Mike Potter's twenty-four years' coverage of the Durham Bulls were well-remembered in a team press release yesterday, picked up by the Indy.
• Most other departments, though not all, were impacted. H-S editor Bob Ashley did note on Sunday that printing, ad production and mailroom activities have grown at Pickett Rd. as the facility's provided logistical and press support for a wider range of weekly newspapers and other publications -- a bright spot in an otherwise bleak report, though one that still brings with it a hefty reliance on print in an increasingly online world.
• And in at least one other possible move, sometimes-controversial H-S columnist John McCann stepped into actual news reporting in today's paper, covering the sentencing of an armed robber at the courthouse.

Comments

[Frank Hyman]

If you want news, you need newspapers.

If we need newspapers, we need civic minded Bull Citizens to pay for subscriptions.

I can complain all day about the quality of some of what's written, but at the end of the day, our household pays for our newspapers because we want a broad cross section of citizens to have access to more than the random info that makes its way into neighborhood listserves and blogs. And we Like having ink print with our cereal and coffee.

Google 'em up and get a subscription--all the rhetoric about how the wonderful internets will provide good and adequate reporting for free is hogwash.

Frank Hyman

[Kevin Davis]

@Frank: I generally agree. Especially relative to the "free" part.

But I'd broaden your statement on newspapers to internet-based local reporting as well. In the doomsday scenario in which newspapers don't exist to adequately cover a community, whatever entity replaces it will either need to--

a) Successfully earn enough in advertising to recoup the costs of hiring professional news staff (more on that below);

b) Charge subscriptions for access; or,

c) Raise funds (a la public radio stations) from members and philanthropists to pay for independent news coverage.

I'm not convinced that newspapers are the only method to provide such coverage; but, to bludgeon an oft-quoted statement on democracy, they've remained a better choice than all the other vehicles.

So whether local news coverage is supported by subscribing to the daily paper (as is today's main method) or some other approach down the road, the idea of free (as in unpaid) comprehensive local reporting replacing newspapers is, indeed, hogwash.

One interesting model, BTW: http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/

[A. Riter]

Ahhh...but you left out the excellent images now lost by the H-S's cut of longtime (since '91) staff photog/photo assignment ed Mark Dolejs.

For fun, check out the pre-Paxton staff directory versus the latest incarnation of what's left of staff here.

[As for McCann, that's one of the stinkiest ledes ever published in a real daily paper: "Soft sentiments of 'I love you' were exchanged Tuesday as a Bull City man who is no stranger to the long arm of the law turned toward his mother and fiancé for one last look before sheriff's deputies hauled him off to jail for a 2008 stickup." McCann should stick to his soft sentiments of homophobia and internalized racist opinions, but I guess the H-S must now scrape the bottom of its barrel.]

[Myers Sugg]

I'd re-subscribe to the HS if McCann wasn't there. I've written about this many times in the past. HS is scraping if they want McCann to write news articles. His ability to intelligently join sentences together for an enjoyable read is challenged at best.

[AR]

I'd re-subscribe if HS will guarantee to honor "vacation" stops. Too many times I've diligently requested a stop only to come home to papers piled at the door. Is it too much to ask?! When I cancelled the subscription, the customer service rep could not guarantee that the delivery would stop immediately. It didn't, and I got free papers for quite some time.

[Michael Bacon]

How many layoffs is the execrable McCann going to survive? Criminy.

I used to subscribe out of a sense of duty. What happened was that unbagged Herald-Suns piled up in my car, my office, and my house. The worst was the Sunday paper, with its 20 lbs of advertising shoved in there. I left the country for a couple of weeks and sent a vacation stop message, which was honored, but they never started again, and oddly enough, I was happier with this.

I want to support local journalism, but the Herald-Sun simply rubs me the wrong way in too many ways. The modern model of daily newspapers is dying -- I'm not happy about it, but I'm starting to accept it.

Quite honestly, if I could pay for a Sunday paper only that actually had a substantive amount of content in it and 1/10th of the advertising (I know it's a moneymaker, but clutter in my house has the tendency to reach toxic levels quickly with that crap), I'd pay the same price I paid for the whole week's delivery. I don't have time to read a daily paper, but a really good weekly one, I'd happily pay substantial money for.

I have no idea how many others are like me.

[Peter]

I've been a longtime subscriber to the Herald-Sun, but I'm thinking about letting it lapse.

Their columnists are horrible. Their recent "guest columnists" on the op/ed page are even worse.

Their recently added "send us your pretty picture and we'll print it" is pathetic.

They've cut out all the real news except for wire reports and their attempt to turn the paper into a homey, local news paper isn't working.

I'm all for supporting local papers, but they have an obligation to print something worth reading and they are failing.

Maybe it's time for the Herald-Sun to close?