Pour one out

for Tribune.

The first big one to take the hit. But, tragically, it's surely just the first casualty of a bloody body count to come. Hoping for the best for all my buddies at Trib papers today.

Interesting and somewhat related interview with Nick Denton of Gawker in MarketWatch today, talking about discovering young writers:

But not the old-fashioned media, that is. In fact, Denton, again, takes the opportunity to rip the mainstream newspapers and magazines for their inability to spot promising young journalists. "People say I have an eye for talent," he scoffed. "That's bull____. The only reason is that newspapers and magazines haven't been doing their jobs, bringing on young writers."

This essentially what I've heard from a lot of our generation of journalists. When newspapers had the opportunity to embrace young talent and make them an integral force of reshaping news coverage for the new media landscape, they instead created an environment that was frightened of new ideas and too reverential to an old architecture, even as it was rapidly buckling under new pressures. The result has been many young journalists who have deemed this attitude to be too unrewarding to bother investing time in, and an exodus followed.

My last newspaper job did me very well experience wise, but by the end, with cutbacks and little new investment, it practically became an endurance test for how long the staff could justify being there for clips alone.