Kathleen Parker at the Orlando Sentinel , along with other employees, got a Tribune Company memo announcing the elimination of 200 jobs in the news division.
She didn’t like it.
“Let me be blunt. Newspapers bite. The work isn’t much fun anymore, thanks to the soul-snatching corporate culture that has euthanized newsroom personalities,” she wrote in her column. “Most papers reflect that numbers-crunching, cubicle-hunkering mentality. We’re boring, predictable, staid and out of touch with the folks with quarters.”
To address this rift between newsrooms and the ordinary American, the American Society of Newspaper Editors is pushing diversity in hiring to bring things back into line.
“As even Ordinary Americans know, adjusting the racial makeup of a newsroom doesn’t begin to address why newspapers are losing readers. As with the Cosmo girl who can’t find her man, it’s not the makeup that’s wrong; it’s the soul that’s gone missing.”