Reason Magazine editor-in-chief Matt Welch discusses the symbol-laden presidency of Barack Obama with Fox Business Channel's Stuart Varney.
http://youtu.be/b5W6KYFWN_Y
The blog post below is easily among the best things I've read, heard or seen all year, and I'm especially pleased that longtime HBB favorite Sharon Waxman is the one sharing the scoop with us via her blog on the website she created.
If you've read this blog for any period of time, you will know exactly why I feel this way, and just to give you a sense of the devastating and penetrating comments made by former Los Angles Times Assistant Editorial Page editor Matt Welch, now Editor-in-chief at Reason magazine, which he gave to Sharon on the telephone -wish I had the audio to play here!- take a look at this:
The paper is “blaming customers, blaming competition, blaming technology, instead of more forthrightly recognizing that the economics (of newspapers) got a lot worse,” he said. “If we don’t confront our own organizational pathologies, we’re in trouble.”The Wrap
WaxWord blog
Former L.A. Times Editor Slams Paper For 'Blaming Customers, Competition, Technology'
By Sharon Waxman
Published: April 3, 2012 @ 2:58 pm,
How badly does former Los Angeles Times editor Matt Welch think the paper is doing?
Its “attitude is killing the host,” he tweeted last weekend.Read the rest of Sharon's post here -and be sure to read the readers comments!
http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/former-la-times-editor-slams-paper-blaming-customers-competition-technology-36768
For those of us like yours truly -and most of you reading this- far from The Left Coast who don't get the LA Times tossed into our front yard every morning, the costs under the LA Times: Digital Unlimited plan is 99 cents for the first four weeks, which includes unrestricted 24/7 access to latimes.com, plus special membership privileges, and then continues at $3.99 a week after promotional period, which comes out to roughly $196 for the year for digital access.
Here's a list of Welch's articles and blogs: http://reason.com/people/matt-welch/all
Here's some pre-2007 pieces: http://mattwelch.com/
This post of Sharon's on Tuesday regarding the Tribune Company-owned Times actually follows by a few days an email I sent out last week about the decision of the Tribune's South Florida Sun-Sentinel to erect a paywall next week, and why I think that in their particular case -as opposed to the Chicago Tribune or even the Baltimore Sun, both of which are MUCH BETTER value-added newspapers- is positively a suicidal roll of the dice.
I will post that email of mine online very soon.
And since many of you reading this probably never saw it the first time, I'll also include links to my critical and fact-filled email -and subsequent blog posts here- to Miami Herald President and Publisher David Landsberg, with cc's to Herald executive editor Aminda Marques and managing editor Rick Hirsch regarding the Herald's continuing unsatisfactory news coverage of Broward County, which so often is either invisible when it should be anything but, or obtuse and condescending when it should be penetrating and hard-hitting.
As I said at the time, neither is acceptable.
Here's a list of Matt Welch's articles and blogs: http://reason.com/people/matt-welch/all
Here's some pre-2007 pieces: http://mattwelch.com/
