Kevin Allman

Pubic support at the Portland Tribune

We've written before about the things that can happen when a paper like the Portland Tribune fires its copyediting staff to save a few bucks. Another example:

Automated spellcheck; it'll be the death of you yet, or at least the source of pubic humiliation.

KGW amends its press release passed off as a staff news report

Surely KGW would've taken down that Red Bull press release that the station credited to (and tried to pass off as) a staff news report. It's been more than 24 hours, after all. Or perhaps they rewrote the story honestly and apologized? You remember the one:

Why, yes, indeedy, they have changed it:

Someone went in, left all the press-release info verbatim, and altered the headline and the text to reflect 80,000 attendees rather than 60,000.

What happened, KGW? Did the Red Bull flacks call and bawl you out for improper stenography?

KGW-TV: Where the press releases passed off as the news come first

KGW-TV:

Thirty-one teams were selected to strut, soar and ultimately splash into the Willamette’s waters, including a final wildcard team chosen by a public vote.

Flugtag, which means “flying day” in German, gives everyday Joes (and Janes!) the chance to be heroes for the day when they launch their homemade human-powered flying machines off a 25-foot high flight deck and into Red Bull Flugtag fame.

Red Bull press release:

Thirty-one teams have been selected to strut, soar and ultimately splash into the Willamette's waters, including a final wildcard team that was chosen by a public vote.

Flugtag, which means "flying day" in German, gives everyday Joes (and Janes!) the chance to be heroes for the day when they launch their homemade human-powered flying machines off a 25-foot high flight deck and into Red Bull Flugtag fame.

KGW-TV:

The first Red Bull Flugtag was held in Vienna in 1991. Since then, more than 40 Red Bull Flugtags have been held around the world – from London to San Francisco – attracting up to 300,000 spectators at one event!

The international flight distance record stands at 195 feet set in 2000 at Red Bull Flugtag Austria.  North America’s longest flight took place at Red Bull Flugtag Nashville in 2007 with a distance of 155 feet.

Red Bull press release:

The first Red Bull Flugtag was held in Vienna in 1991. Since then, more than 40 Red Bull Flugtags have been held around the world -- from London to San Francisco -- attracting up to 300,000 spectators at one event!

The international flight distance record stands at 195 feet set in 2000 at Red Bull Flugtag Austria. North America's longest flight took place at Red Bull Flugtag Nashville in 2007 with a distance of 155 feet.

The Portland Tribune: what the hell?

Last month, in a terribly misguided attempt to save a few bucks, the Portland Tribune fired its copyediting staff. This was the result on day one:

Things don't seem to have improved, as Matt Davis discovered this morning:

And the story's been edited since then...to make it even worse:

This isn't a fuss over a misspelled word here or a split infinitive there; mistakes are inevitable at the best of papers, and by the best of writers and editors. This is the work of someone who doesn't know how to write, or just doesn't care enough to get it right.

If a newspaper can't master the basics of spelling and grammar, how can it expect readers to trust the information it presents?

Given the English-as-a-second-language level of this reporting, I've got a suspicion as to what might be going on here, and it involves outsourcing -- there's certainly precedent. And I kinda hope it's true, because I wouldn't want to think that anyone at a mid-sized American newspaper didn't even have passable, basic high school English skills.

AAN award nominations announced

The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies announced its finalist list for this year's AAN Awards, and one of the nominees is Willamette Week's 2007 Restaurant Guide (which I helped work on). Congrats to the WW and to restaurant guide editor Byron Beck.

Also on the nominee list (for Cover Design): the excellent Independent Weekly in Lafayette, La. Congrats to editor Scott Jordan and his staff.

The Portland Tribune and KPTV: why no conflict-of-interest disclosure?

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.

The Portland Tribune: what you get when you fire copy editors

Last week, the Portland Tribune fired most of its copyediting staff and announced:

On Monday, May 5, the Portland Tribune enters its next phase of innovative, cutting-edge journalism as the newspaper launches a more complete daily online newspaper...

This morning:

Too bad there wasn't a copy editor around to cry foul on that dec.

The Portland Tribune makes its announcement

As expected, the Portland Tribune announced to its readers this morning that it's cutting jobs and going from a twice-a-week publication schedule to a weekly. The letter to its readers, from Portland Tribune president Steve Clark, tries to put a pretty bow on the move by spinning it as a move to "a more complete daily online newspaper that will be accompanied by a single weekly print edition to be published each Thursday."

It's a strange, sad letter -- a combo plate of defensiveness and buzzwords:

We were the first to identify sustainability as the future of our communities and worthy of its own major publication: Sustainable Life....We become even more environmentally sensitive by launching the nation’s most sustainable daily newspaper in America’s most sustainable community.

"Sustainable," in Portlandese, is like "family values" -- it's an amorphous, commonly recognized Good Thing that no one can quite define; it means whatever you want it to mean at the moment. In this case, it seems that the Trib is trying to say that going weekly has its upside because it's Kind To Trees.

What else?

This means your best source of local news – on the Web and in print – just got better as we expand breaking coverage of Portland and regional news...

In moving to a once a week print newspaper and online daily, we will employ fewer people in some departments.

How they're going to expand news coverage by employing fewer people isn't quite explained, but I guess it's the kind of the thing you have to say in situations like this. What you don't have to do, though, is take potshots at your competitors as you're bailing water.

Such as The Oregonian:

The Tribune consistently has defied those readership trends and criticisms by providing print and Web journalism that robustly and increasingly serves Portland in ways that other media – including the state’s 158-year-old daily newspaper – do not.

Such as bloggers (also known, in many cases, as "your readers"):

We fully expect that there will be those who will criticize our strategy. Through the years, we have routinely been scorned by some, including bloggers who are prone to vitriolic negativity.

Such as the other alt-weeklies:

Other comments may come from competitors such as Willamette Week – which makes a practice of throwing stones at us and others, but rarely praise.

Oh, grow up. The Tribune isn't a bad paper, and it's not its fault that newsprint costs are soaring, advertising is down (probably forever), and the industry's entire future is in question. I hope the Tribune survives and manages to come up with a "sustainable" business model. But flailing around, sniping at, and whining about your competitors just makes you look petty and small.

Oregonian layoffs: a clue from the past

Yesterday's news that The Oregonian is attempting to slash costs by offering a buyout to every part-time employee in the place was just the latest tremor (or death throe) in the newspaper world; but in light of that announcement, a publisher's memo from last August seems a little...well, prescient.

In summer 2007, the O was going through its second "voluntary retirement offer" in two years. At the time, publisher Fred Stickel said: "This voluntary retirement offer is necessary in order to keep our company payroll in line with revenue. Unlike other companies, we do not reduce the size of the staff through layoffs."

But here's the money quote:

Here at The Oregonian, we are still fully committed to our pledge to regular, full-time employees with regards to job security:

“No full-time, non-represented regular employee will ever be laid off due to economic conditions or the introduction of new technology so long as they successfully complete their probationary period, continue to do their job satisfactorily, are willing to retrain if necessary, and we continue to publish this newspaper.”

There will be no change in our commitments to non-represented full-time, regular employees. We shall continue honoring them in the future, as we have in the past.

Part of me thinks this is laudable and wishes other publishers would go on the record this boldly.

And another part of me thinks that the continued emphasis on "full-time" was a shrewd bit of wiggle room by a company whose corporate eye was on the dying sparrow, even back in summer 2007.

O cynical me.

(By the way: in the 2007 buyout, they gave the buyout-ers a year's salary and full medical and dental benefits to the age of 65, which is by any modern standard pretty generous. I'll be curious to see what they offer up to the part-timers as compared to the old-timers.)

Black Thursday in Portland media

First Oregon Media Insiders reported, then the Willamette Week's Byron Beck confirmed, that The Oregonian is about to offer all its part-time employees, in all departments, a buyout:

In an unprecedented move, every part-time employee at The O (that tallies up to around 300 people company-wide) is being offered a buyout by the powers that be (we heard it's driven by publisher Fred Stickel's office).  In the latest cost-cutting measure during difficult economic times in the newspaper industry, the O's part-time employees have been told they will receive letters in the mail in the next week addressing their personal situations (salary, benefits, etc.).

And now Matt Davis at the Portland Mercury says that the O's competitor, the twice-weekly Portland Tribune, is hemorrhaging as well:

The Portland Tribune has been reportedly canning newsroom people today, and may go one day a week.

This all comes on the heels of some other things that I'd been hearing (the Trib eliminating all freelancers, and the Willamette Week paring its editorial budget to the quick). I never worked a hell of a lot for any of these places, but I'm sure glad I got out of that media market. Awful.

Update: Now Beck is reporting the Trib has:

laid off a news writer, a Web reporter and nearly the entire copy editing staff.  We've also heard from at least one Trib insider that the paper will drop from twice a week (Tuesdays and Fridays) to once a week, on Thursdays.

Sad.

No copy editors? A good copy editor is worth a dozen mid-level managers.

And...once-a-week publication?!?!

Will it become the city's third alt-weekly? What the hell kind of business strategy is that?

The smartest thing the Trib could do is tack hard-right; that's the only market left in Portland. The city's already got the institutional left-leaning daily, the established alt-weekly, and the snarky alt-alt-weekly that's snapping at both their heels. Seems like the smartest thing to do would be to morph into a contrarian publication that snipes at all of them, rather than a sad mashup of all three, scrabbling for the same eyeballs and advertisers.