They are fighting battles (perhaps understandably) based around keeping the existing model of news production on a printed page and management are fighting the battles of removing as many people as possible to keep artificially high profit margins (20%+)

In the meantime they have both failed to notice that as peoples appetite for news is increasing, there particular medium is decreasing. If I hear another protestation that the downturn is ‘cyclical’ or that the ‘credit crunch’ is the root cause of declining advertising and sales I think I’ll scream. It is delusional to suppose when the economy is on the up all these advertisers will flock back to single edition printed advertisements, in the same way that people following a breaking story at 11pm on a Sunday night will wait to 1pm on Monday for the evening paper to cover it.

News has become democratised by the web, but it still needs proper punctuation and authority, which is where news(papers) organisations can add value.

It is the “all that and more” that seems to be really scary. It is almost like the web design, editing, content creation, and aggregation skills are a ‘basic’ expectation. Tapping into the depth of “all that and more” may be the only way to make oneself indispensable.

The advantage that seasoned professionals have in the ‘deadwood business’ is the richness of experience that years of journalism bring…that, cannot be taught nor can it be acquired via any plop-plop-fizz-fizz method (I know. Try telling that to a boss faced with red ink on the bottom line). The uncomfortable news is that ‘continuing education’ requires an pervasive, task master emphasis on the ‘continuing’ part…and that applies to both the seasoned professional and the recently graduated.