Monday, December 8, 2008
News We Want Our Competition Back: Dana Kopp Franklin Part of Tennessean Bloodbath
Posted by Jim Ridley on Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 3:41 PM
Bites was bummed to learn that in last week's corporate bloodletting at the Tennessean, which resulted in the elimination of some 90 jobs and positions, the morning daily laid off its eminently capable food writer, Dana Kopp Franklin. A veteran reporter from the days of the late Nashville Banner, and a tireless employee who not only posted regular food reviews and news but also held down a copy-editing gig, Franklin made covering the city's restaurant developments an ongoing foot race.
Comments (16)
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When will those in the print media realize that they have been replaced by the worldwide web? And do they understand that they engineered their own demise by not offering the readers what they wanted? Or maybe it would be more accurate to describe it as giving them NOT what they wanted: we'll take our news without a liberal slant or some other type of agenda from the editorial staff.
If you'd only stuck to providing the news minus any of the B/S that could usually be found sprinkled within, you'd have stood a chance when readers were offered a choice. I'll never pay for the Tennessean again. Why should I?
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Hey Jeffie! Uhmm - the Tennessean is, how can I say this, online? Read it ever day! Ptooie!
Meanwhile, Gail Kerr is still onboard? Read on:
http://enclave-nashville.blogspot.com/2008/12/queen-of-denial.html#links
And fuck you and your anti-liberal bias. You are a one tune show. You take your guns and we'll keep the change.
Folks are turning to online news sources because they want their news free of bias?!? That's the best laugh I've had all day. Yeah, that explains why people click on Daily Koz or Huffington Post or Michelle Malkin or whomever--the lack of an agenda.
I second Pink's point, and add that non-mainstream online sources such as blogs are often staffed by untrained writers without an education in sourcing, quotes, precise language, ethics, corroboration, note-taking and note-keeping, and such. I think it shows, often times. Give me a trained journalist any day over a firebrand with a cause.
I was thinking about this just this morning when I was listening to the Tribune guy talking on NPR...news is not free. Much of what is "free" on the internet is paid for by the mainstream (print) media. Bloggers won't have anything to report or opine on if paid journalists disappear.
That said, I think the Tennessean is useless and always have. They should be reporting local news of interest and almost nothing they report is interesting. I moved away from Memphis four years ago and I still find The Commercial Appeal to be more interesting. That's sad. I think they just have a better Metro department. The Tennessean is just aimless.
Good luck to Dana, Bill, Carol, Perry & the many other talented folks that the TN has let go. It is clearly the Tennessean's loss.
Let's hope Dana chimes in on the Bites threads. She always has her fork squarely on the food pulse. (Gory fork metaphors aside, good luck, DKF.)
first off, the Tennessean is a Gannett paper, best to never be confused with anything amounting to a newspaper. Second, Gannett is not local, as best evidenced by my mother realizing she was reading a review of Goten - where she and I had eaten on her last trip out here - as a sort of 'restaurants like this are all the rage some places' article in her local Gannett rag, 2500 miles away in the San Joaquin valley of California. Despicable. But very corporate, and very efficient use of already paid copy.
As for print media in general, it's like music, cars, electric utilities, and whatever else will have its day and then pass. It served its purpose and has been replaced. Do we have journalists in other media ready to replace those that have been so well trained by the print media? no. Will we? I think so - there certainly are enough out of work to figure out some way to ply their trade in a new paradigm. Will they? Depends. Who's paying them? Remember, the newspapers tried to make us all buy their online content, and we refused. So now it's advertiser-supported. Hmm, just like the real paper. Why can't they figure out how to make as much money from a zillion clicks with no hard production costs from the same reader-count that they did for all those years with subscribers? I don't know. that's the problem for them to solve. What worked before is gone, so quit chasing it, just like the way you built and designed and marketed and sold cars in the 60s should not be your model for now. And if you wrote a big hit 40 years ago it doesn't necessarily mean you should continue to expect exclusive income from it. It ain't sheet music any more. these are all archaic business models and need to be replaced, without becoming religion and ritual for us.
If you can't tell, I'm getting really tired of everyone wanting change but nobody ready to accept the change in front of them. Cars, newspapers, copyright entitlements, telephone companies - they've existed for the blink of an eye. There is no reason to keep making it work just for the sake of it being what we have done before. Evolve or die. Adapt. Create. Invent. It's our only hope.
or was obi wan our only hope? I get confused...
but I am still nowhere near as confused as any ditto head who thinks the tennessean was ever liberal. disagreeing with you or Rush does not make one liberal. There is no such thing as liberal in today's politics. Barry Goldwater would be liberal by those standards. We can't even achieve moderate. How much hate do you have to have in your soul to hear of people serving your community and losing their jobs and feel the need to express your ridiculous indignation at some construed bias. ooh, you'll stop reading! they're quaking. we're still waiting for you to start reading.
Attention all Banner and Tennessean alumni: I just got word of a Group Hug Mixer Dec. 18 at Ombi from 4 to 7 p.m. Pass it on.
the culling is coming........ wow, what an unwarranted blast of hate. Almost what you'd expect to come from ol' Rosie O. And how did I get lumped into the gun crowd based on the comments I made? And did I really justify the use of the "f" word?
I'm willing to bet I'm a little left of center of the majority of Americans. I simply was trying to make the point that the paper version of the Tennessean was no longer a bargain when I can get my news for free (free to me) online and minus any biases that are blatant and in-your-face like the Tennessean is known to do.
Cut back on your Haterade today "the culling". You'll feel better for it...........
Just curious: Could you provide some examples of online news sites independent of an existing print source, "minus any biases that are blatant and in-your-face like the Tennessean is known to do?"
I like to go to Digg. It may not be independent of an existing print source, but I get to pick and choose my news versus an editorial board that would do the same for me.
I guess my big hang-up is with the editorial board at the Tennessean. And I can never forgive them for supporting a state income tax that the legislators wished to impose on the citizens of the state. This state attracts a lot of corporate outsiders based on our tax structure and the Tennessean would wish to see these jobs go to another state. I'm from NC so I've seen the abuses that come with yet another layer of taxation on the state level.
And I guess the local news in the Tennessean just bores me to tears. It's just regurgitated crap from the outlying counties that consists of stories about pitiful hillbillies, another meth lab, some person that found a unusual rock in their back yard...... blah, blah, blah. The writers are lame and the stories are too. When I can find interesting stuff online I'd be hard pressed to stop at the Walgreens down the street and buy a copy (you know there are no more paper machines on the sidewalk, right? like they think their product is so valuable they need to move it inside) to bring home.
Sorry, it's no value. Maybe as solely an online based paper it might become more competitive and bring more to the ADD addled reader such as myself.
