DEDICATED TO BJ ALUMS FOUNDER HARRY LIGGETT 1930-2014, BJ NEWSROOM LEGEND 1965-1995, AND TO JOHN OLESKY JR., 1932-2024, BJ MAINSTAY 1969-1996 AND BLOG EDITOR 2014-2024. Blog for retired and former Beacon Journal employees and other invited guests.
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Tuesday, March 10, 2009
PD publisher says report baseless
“Don’t believe everything you read” is a good rule. There were two posts on this blog Monday forecasting gloom and doom for two area newspapers: the Plain Dealer and the Canton Repository. On both posts, we advised viewers to be wary.
One of the posts put the PD in a list of 10 newspapers in danger of closing. The reaction came swiftly from PD publisher Terrance Egger, according to a story on Cleveland.com by PD reporter Patrick O’Donnell.
Though this appeared on Time's Web site and with a Time logo on Yahoo!, the report was from an online-only site, 247WallSt.com, O’Donnell wrote..
"People put this out there and associate Time Magazine with it," Egger said, upon hearing that another source produced the report. He doubted readers would notice that distinction. "It's still the Time brand it's associated with."
The BJ Alums post did say that the report came from 24/7 WallSt.blog of Douglas McIntyre
If we had done a little more homework we would have learned, as O’Donnell pointed out, that McIntyre is the son of Bruce McIntyre, former city editor at the BJ. That explains everything a little better for some of the old timers who worked for Bruce who was nicknamed “Mac the Knife” because he liked to stick the knife in. So the kid gets it honest.
[If you are out there somewhere, Mac, send us an update]
The Time Website report (they get all their reports from someone) was indeed sensational but not completely baseless. All newspapers are in trouble and that is sensational.
The other post on the Repository was completely ridiculous as we pointed out.
Read the report on the Time website and the answer on Cleveland.com
It was almost a year ago that the editor or publisher of the Plain Dealer told the staff that the PD hoped to go completely online within a year or so. So that part of the report is true. My source: A person in the newsroom when the staff talk was made. So, if you believe the PD leader, then the goal is to become a newspaper not printed on paper.Which, come to think of it, might be the fate of most, if not all, newspapers. I mean, who thought the days of the horse and buggy would ever end?
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