IL's Stephen George asks: "Has The Courier-Journal lost its way?"

What is journalism now?

IL's Stephen George has written a very frightening glimpse into daily affairs at the once mighty C-J. This one's a must-read, folks.

With more staff cuts and a newsroom reorganization driven by market research, has The Courier-Journal lost its way? by Stephen George (Insider Louisville)

The executive editor and publisher of The Courier-Journal called the news staff of about 40 into a meeting on Tuesday afternoon, ostensibly to talk about the future.

That future, they soon learned, would start with all of them reapplying for their jobs. It’s a particularly dehumanizing part of an ongoing process driven by parent company Gannett and embraced by C-J executives to incorporate more market research and demographic trends into the paper’s reporting.

Journalism -- it's the perfect place for marketing professionals, rather like the best time to smoke cigarettes is while you're pumping gas.

The extraordinary contraction of the newspaper industry during the past decade has prompted round after round of layoffs and shrinking page counts. As ad revenue has declined, newspaper executives at the C-J and up the Gannett chain have scrambled to figure out what’s wrong, devoting increasingly more time and money to market research. Reporters and editors at the C-J have been subjected to various initiatives — driven by marketing professionals and often carrying goofy corporate rhetoric — designed to better connect them with their audience, a goal most media companies strive to achieve.

Uh oh ... it's the "profit motive" thingy again.

The memo is an explicit indicator of the change in approach C-J executives are pushing. Traditionally, reporters have been protected from the market pressures affecting their newspapers. It’s as old as newspapers themselves: Profit motive can corrupt the pursuit of news and investigations that aren’t exactly sexy but remain essential to the public discourse.

Now, reporters at all Gannett publications are being equipped with technology to monitor the performance of their online stories in real time. This might seem like useful information, but the implication has been clear: Write stories that people want to read. Never mind the traditional role of newspapers as keepers of the public trust.

“I don’t think they’re ignoring (the strong journalistic tradition at the C-J),” said one staffer. “I think they’re trying to obliterate it. It’s how can we get the most metric hits.”

It's a depressing and necessary read. I'm fond of reminding the uninformed that they're entitled to their own opinion, not their own facts, but as should be painfully obvious, we've already entered a protracted period of fact elimination. Then what?

LEO's Stephen George on the death of a bicyclist; NAC's junior editor on the Bridges Project and oil addiction.

A tip of the hat goes to Stephen George.

The LEO writer has made metro transportation his personal issue, and he’s a tenacious bulldog about it. It's refreshing to see a writer filling the classic role.

Sadly, I’m so old that I can remember when such journalistic dynamos were the stock in trade of the Courier-Journal, but now, given the numbing and dumbing effects of two decades of stewardship by Gannett (a word that bears a striking resemblance to the Spanish word “garrote,” which is a length of chain, wire or rope used to strangle someone to death, or in this usage: “From its hidden vantage point in the back seat, the Courier-Journal editorial board has shamelessly Gannetted/garroted the concept of 8664 on a regular basis.”)

George’s article this week:

A bridge to bike-friendly

How Chips Cronen, the cyclist who died on the Second Street Bridge earlier this month, will help change the way you think about road riding — for the better.

Here are a handful of links that will help you understand the significance of Cronen’s death:

A Cyclist’s Death

Safe Streets Louisville

Reasons you should ride a bicycle & your business should use bike based couriers

Meanwhile, yesterday NAC pointed toward:

(An) 8664 event today on the Great Lawn of Louisville's Waterfront Park.

This led to a wonderful posting at John Gonder’s blog:

A Utopian Greenway ?

Later in the day on Wednesday, my colleague Bluegill weighed in on the configuration of the Greenway and provided this instructive comment, which I’m now lifting to the marquee:

A part of the problem is that the (Greenway) project is being mostly funded with federal transportation dollars.

The politicians who decry oil company price gouging and our involvement in the Middle East in relation to oil are the very same bunch who perpetuate a transportation funding system that heavily favors gas guzzling automobile projects at the expense of fuel-sparing ones.

Per Thomas Friedman of the NY Times and many others, we pay for it all twice. Once at the pump, where dollars ultimately end up in the oily hands of those funding terrorists, insurgents, etc., and then again with our tax dollars via the military who are given the life threatening but ridiculous job of warding off the groups we fund.

Meanwhile, our tax dollars are used to create single occupancy vehicle projects that not only exacerbate our dependence on the above cycle but also preclude a significant portion of the population from getting to jobs, school, and other life improving activities.

If that's not enough, development groups like One Southern Indiana and Greater Louisville Incorporated then come around asking for even more tax dollars, at least a portion of which will be used to convince us that following that same path as quickly and blindly as possible is the only way to salvage our economic well-being.

The only person who represents us at the federal level who currently seems to understand all that (and who knows what's happened to Yarmuth) is Indiana Senator Richard Lugar.

Readers, particularly very pro-business Republicans, should check out the energy section of his web site, particularly the link to curing our oil addiction.

It's not at all disingenuous to suggest that the Bridges Project and automobile portions of the Greenway support terrorism.

I'm especially pleased. I already knew that NABC's brewing equipment helps to kill fascists. Now I can take the added pleasure in knowing that my Trek hybrid is a weapon against terrorism, and that I don't even have to shop 'til I drop to be a cog in the war.

Before all this came up, we noted that New Albany could use a "positive spirit" enlargement pill when it comes to attitudes toward bicycling, but don't hold your breath.