The editor of the Tampa Tribune, Janet Coats, got the attention of her Facebook friends last Saturday when she posted this message: "Janet is preparing to fire a shot over the bow." I figured Janet's staff at the Tribune was about to score a scoop in the Sunday paper. But a quick check of Tampa Bay Online didn't turn up anything that matched her provocative post. Then I saw it. "This Newspaper Is Fighting Back." And before I read on, a quick word came to mind: "Yes!!"……
Tag: David Westphal
Washington Post: Readers get a seat at the news meeting
They may be moving too ineptly and too slowly, but newspapers are confronting the reality that their longtime role as gatekeeper of information has reached an end. My former boss, McClatchy’s Howard Weaver, used to put it this way: Some newspapers are still standing guard at the gate; problem is, because of the Internet, the fences are all down. One of the results is that the old days of one-way communication – the newspaper telling its readers what was important, take it or leave it – are fading away. Two-way communication is the order of the day. But only now……
In financial crisis, the objective story shows its limits
The financial press has been taking it on the chin lately for its coverage of the nation's economic mess. Some of it's well-earned. At least several financial writers have acknowledged they should have asked more questions about the long period of easy credit, soaring asset prices and ever-growing leverage on Wall Street. To my eye, the criticism is overcooked. Even a casual reader of the business press the last few years would have known that big trouble lurked. The two dailies showing up on my doorstep in Washington the last 13 years, the Washington Post and New York Times, regularly……