Wednesday, November 12, 2008

“Are the people losing their voice?” *

That's just one of the pressing questions that will be asked of six news industry experts, including Press-Telegram executive editor Rich Archbold, at a discussion forum this Saturday (Nov. 15) from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm at the Long Beach Main Library Auditorium, 101 Pacific Ave. “Press in Transition” is sponsored by The League of Women Voters. You can download their flyer here.

What will be the effect on citizenship and democracy if newspapers continue to decline? Are you engaged citizens or consumers of infotainment? What does the future hold for newspapers?

These are the kind of questions we get asked when we are out in the community talking with citizens about our fight to preserve journalism jobs in Long Beach.

Along with our editor, other panelists will be Douglas Shuit and Jeff Rabin, former LAT reporters; Neena Strichart, Signal Tribune publisher; Harry Salzgaver, executive director of the MediaNews-owned Gazette Newspapers and Dr. Danny Paskin, journalism professor at CSULB.

Though newspaper companies remain profitable, we're told the industry is in the tank. The bloodletting continues in the nation's newsrooms — over 13,000 newspaper jobs have been slashed this year — advertisers are fleeing (ad revenue is expected to drop by 11.5% this year) and readers are left holding newspapers pretty much devoid of local news they can use.

We're looking forward to answers to other questions sure to be asked. See you there.

* 13,000 newspaper job cuts now number 13,111: FishbowlLA checks in with journalist Erica Smith who is keeping track of the death by thousands of cuts to newspapers. Asks FBLA: "We can't have a democracy without a free press and we can't have a free press without paying them -- so what's in store for the future?" More

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Prepare to have smoke blown up your.....

Anonymous said...

Talk about mixed company.

Anonymous said...

Why is Salzgaver participating in this? The Gazette papers are THE WORST ... nearly as bad as the P-T!

Anonymous said...

The Gazette papers and the P-T are both MediaNews publications. It seems what is missing are staffers from the newsrooms.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, odd that the reporters on the panel aren't local. In fact, aren't even currently employed by a newspaper. Not unusual these days, but what's that suggest about the direction the discussion may go?

Seems to me it would be a good thing for all local newsroom staffers to attend — maybe offer up their own ideas and opinions about the press in transition.

Why leave the discussion to the usual spinners?

Anonymous said...

Dean Singleton Saved the Press-Telegram !!!!
don't you know that !

Anonymous said...

July 2008

“In case you didn’t know it, the PT is dead."

-Harry Saltzgaver

Anonymous said...

So how was this clusterf@ck ... er, meeting of the minds?