Ultra-local news


Frank Ahrens from the WaPo blogs on his Future of Newspapering piece, profiling Gannett‘s operation in Fort Myers. The hero of Ahrens’ piece is Chuck Myron, and after the hype, I thought it might be instructive to see some of the stuff Chuck is – well – chucking out…


Sisters come from Maine to watch parents play

By Chuck Myron
cmyron@news-press.com
Originally posted on December 05, 2006

John and Sally Shire used to travel around all the time watching their two daughters play sports.

“It’s payback time,” Sally Shire said.

Kim Shire and her sister Nikki Hammer came from Bangor, Maine, to spend a week watching their parents compete in the Florida Senior Games. They cheered on their mother in a 5K bicycle time trial Tuesday on Kensington Parkway in Cape Coral.

“It’s really cool to see how active they are,” Hammer said. “It’s just sheer excitement.”

Forget the revolutionary talk, this is what it really looks like. More bleeding edge than cutting edge when you see it there in black and white.

Meanwhile this is an anonymous post from Ahrens blog:

I’m a reporter at one of Gannett’s largest newspapers, and there is an intense effort afoot to reduce content, make stories much shorter and abandon a lot of the enterprise reporting that has made our newspaper special. Now reporters will focus more on intense local news for the Web. Problem is, no editors are questioning the quality of journalism we are producing. It’s all about filling holes.

As one can imagine, morale has sunk to an all-time low here. The exodus of talented reporters has left the newsroom with a major void. Our enterprise team is down to a few reporters. No one seems to care but the writers.

Ah, life…

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