KPTV-TV, Portland's Fox affiliate, covered the ch-ch-changes at the Portland Tribune in a nice story that put a pleasant-as-possible spin on the paper's scaling-back of its print edition:
The Tribune described this move as freeing its staff up to post more news online and eliminate some of the –- environmentally and economically -- wasteful paper product.
On Monday, the newspaper will launch a daily online paper at portlandtribune.com.
The paper's president said the strategic move will make the paper more environmentally friendly.
He also said that it will allow the paper to cover breaking news like never before.
The changes come at a difficult time financially for the print industry.
"The cost of newsprint has gone up 21 cents since Dec. 1 of last year. What we're trying to do is manage the publishing side and online side in a robust economic way," Portland Tribune President Steve Clark said.
Clark said the company is laying off six employees with the changes.
Sweet, sympathetic, and a bit PR-ish -- but howcum no mention of the fact that the Trib and KPTV are partners? The paper and the TV station have paired up on stories before, and the partnership was (responsibly) mentioned in Clark's original letter. In the past, that disclosure's been boilerplate in other stories that have run on KPTV about the Trib.
It's basic conflict-of-interest, freshman J-school stuff. But in this particular case, it just didn't seem worth mentioning at KPTV.
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