Thursday, November 15, 2012
Turmoil at Hudson-Catskill Newspapers
Sam Pratt now has on his blog the letter, dated yesterday, which was written and signed by seven members of the editorial staff, protesting the firing of Register-Star reporter Tom Casey and requesting that he be reinstated: "Exclusive: Reg-Star staff protest letter."
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It seems likely that the firing of a reporter such as Tom Casey at a small town newspaper would not have raised much of a stir pre-blog world. That was then. This is blog world now. Local reaction to Casey's firing through Gossips posts and Sam Pratt followed by notes in one of the most widely read national journalism blogs has reminded all of us that a small town story can reflect national issues about how news is passed on to citizens. I do wonder if the local blog coverage combined with Romenesko helped reporting staff at the Register to stand up to Coleman and Hyland? The Register doesn't have a union so did local blogs and calls from Jim Romenesko to their bosses become their backup union? What they did is a very big deal. I suspect that Coleman is old school and thinks blogs don't add up to much. And Hyland? It is tough to find jobs in journalism, especially print. Kudos to Carole Osterink and Sam Pratt for opening this up for everyone.
ReplyDeleteAnd the letter of protest from the staff is a very good one. As the writers of it point out, quite succinctly, there were plenty of ways of handling the pledge dissent story other than that chosen by RS management. Casey's a brave kid -- and off to a great start in a field like no other.
ReplyDeleteWhat these youngsters ought to do is launch their own on-line newspaper.
ReplyDeleteMore competition with their former employers will be to everyone's benefit (the quality of the Register Star can only improve).
They can slash their costs by cutting out the print overhead, and there's been enough of a hullabaloo to attract any number of investors and advertisers.
Perhaps the community can donate news and historical photos.
To get them off to a start, there are lots of people who would donate weekly columns on all sorts of non-news-related topics.
Just sayin' ...
It's not like thirty thousand people read these rags each day.
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