Weakness In Numbers

Editor & Publisher reports that 50 top newspaper executives will gather at the American Press Institute next week for closed-door meeting to commiserate gripe moan weep "discuss corporate renewal techniques" for the industry. Translation: "We're screwed. Anybody got any ideas?"

Here's one: Lock the 50 execs into the room and throw away the key. And I'm being polite.

Comments

[edward]

The American Press Institute is the problem, not the solution. This is the think tank that took newspapers down the cemetery path of community newspapers and local, local. The recent circulation reports show the results of that disaster because people get bored at looking at pictures of someone else's pretty puppy. The API has also created a generation of editors and newspaper executives driven by top-down management styles that are stifling newspapers as much as Kremlin central planners stifled the Soviet economy. See the results of this in the horrendous reports of newspaper bottom lines. Creativity comes from the bottom up, not top down. This crisis won't be over until this generation of editors is put out to pasture, and reporters liberated to cover the news once again.