Friday, April 11, 2008

Singleton's five-year plan

The worst is over, and it's all easy street from here on out. That's according to the World Association of Newspapers. Singleton is reportedly scheduled to speak at the World Newspaper Congress in Sweden, on the state of the industry.

In the article, they report Singleton to have said the future of newspapers is "promising" and will rely on online and "new product offerings" to offset the loss of interest in his core business products. No plans were mentioned regarding that core business however, other than that it will be "revised."

From down here in the ant farm, there are serious fears that the sole strategy is simply to abandon the core business of journalism, in favor of other offerings like the now-defunct More San Pedro magazine. There has been nothing yet to indicate a desire to improve, or even preserve, the rapidly-diminishing business of local news content.

We certainly wish MediaNews nothing but success, but hopefully that success doesn't come at the expense of the employees dedicated to producing relevant, quality journalism, and the communities that rely on them.

No comments: