I don't propose to answer this question myself, for fear of being either lynched by a baying mob of subs, or told to clear my desk by the men at the top...but here's a very interesting piece from the Independent on Sunday about London freesheet City AM's decision to axe its sub-editing staff.

For me the central issue is that raised by 'an insider':-

Everybody has a price; for the Bancrofts it was a tidy five billion and the hollow promise of a 'special commitee' to preserve the Wall Street Journal's editorial integrity - a deal that would certainly have had editors of The Times in London rolling their eyes. Cue much 'wailing and gnashing of teeth' (as the Private Eye would put it), slapping of foreheads and keyboards burning as bloggers register their disgust on the internet.

It is perhaps fitting that the last article i wrote for this website was about the relative security of the print format.

(USA) - My speculation last week that Fox had a clever plan to take over newspaper and local TV news, and grab local advertising revenues, got a big credibility boost today.

(USA) - Ron Berryman, who has responsibility for the online strategy of Fox's local TV affiliates, sure seems impatient these days waiting for his stations to create more original local content.  What could Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox be up to?  Hmmm.  Let's play out the next 5-15 years.  Local newspapers will have moved online, perhaps totally.  Web-based TV (IPTV) will have made local TV affiliates obsolete -- there no longer being a need for each metro area to have its o

Who came up with this silly notion that news outlets would have greater "editorial independence" to criticize government, follow more enlightened principles, and report with less bias if the founders' descendants and their families were granted more corporate voting power than their financial stockholdings merited?  OK, it must have been the descendants themselves, but why did the rest of us go along with this?

After weeks of rumour and rumblings at 111 Buckingham Palace Road, the Telegraph Media Group has finally launched My Telegraph, the latest a

The cries from Wall Street Journal staffers have been apocalyptic, warning us of impending doom. Said one, "The [Murdoch-owned] New York Post and Fox News are grotesque, fearsome mutants of what newsrooms should be." Said one of their unions, "[Murdoch] has shown a willingness to crush quality and independence." But, who's to say what a newsroom "should be"? Who has the right to determine the criteria against which "quality" is judged?

Since current news outlets are “mass media” and reach very large audiences, each advertising contract these days is very valuable.  So, advertising is typically sold by attractive, personable, service-oriented humans known as “sales representatives.”  But, what happens when news outlets ultimately splinter into multitudes as news consumers seek the news that interests them most – news of family and friends (“social computing”), news that fits personal political ideologies, very local news, vocational and avocational news, etc.?  As expla

For the many years when the paper was highly profitable and its stock value solid, public shareholders of the New York Times tolerated the indignity that they owned 99% of the company, but elected only 4 of the 13 Directors — the remaining 9 are elected by holders of special, non-publicly traded shares controlled by the founding Sulzberger family.

Go back to Part 1 Redundant - in more ways than one

Man vs Machine