BANG: Singleton's Waterloo?

Former San Mateo County Times editor John Bowman blogs "Silicon Valley looking like Singleton's Waterloo". (Bowman quit last year because of MediaNews consolidation that threatened the paper's quality.) "The slow-motion train wreck that has been Dean Singleton's latest foray into the Bay Area over the past two years is clearly gathering steam." On the massive job cuts: "... more evidence that Singleton is a one-trick pony whose trick — slashing jobs, slashing pages, slashing quality, slashing costs — isn't working well."

No, it isn't working well. It's hurting us here too. Slash and burn tactics designed to do increase corporate profits will ultimately destroy the product that produced the revenue; there's not much left of a great newspaper after it's sucked dry.

Down here in LANG, it doesn't have to go that way. We know it will take a drastic change in the corporate mindset to stop the dismantling of our hometown newspaper. Nonetheless, we'll continue to report and produce quality journalism efficiently and as best we can with the limited resources available to us — providing our communities with not just what they want to know, but what they need to know.