It is funny how readers regard newspapers. Some people today do not even read them. I came from an Ohio county with three daily newspapers. I worked for the smallest of the three and hated to hear how people in our town believed the others were better. Not many readers had a good word to say about my newspaper. I came to Akron and the Beacon Journal because everyone considered it the best newspaper in Ohio. I was surprised to meet Akron residents who said, “Oh, you work for the Beacon Journal.” They made it sound like wow, it was a big deal that I worked at the BJ. I knew that residents of most other communities did not show that respect for their newspapers.
I was disheartened then when a supermarket checkhout cashier remarked recently. “They deserved to be sold.”
Readers are not kind. There will be comments like “How bad can it (the newspaper) get. They will have little sympathy for those who lost their jobs. “They were overpaid” is the comment you can expect.
With a smaller, lower-quality product, which is inevitable with the slashing of so many newsroom jobs, regardless of the reason, readers will have less and less reason to be loyal.
ReplyDeleteLike Harry, when I came to the BJ and people found out where I worked, their faces were full of admiration and they praised the BJ so much it made me proud to work there. As I got deeper and deeper into my retirement (1996), I almost was reluctant to let people know I worked there. Today, they'd have to pry it out of me, because the pride has long been obliterated by the quest for more and more profits.