Boring and bland are symptoms of a disease


Roger Black on the Newspaper Disease:

What is needed is a fundamental restructuring of the newspaper business. And it has gotten too late to expect the inmates to redesign the asylum. It’s going to have to be done by the proprietors. Willful, single-minded, near-genius proprietors like the ones who built the business.

… Newspapers have about a year to get rid of all the people who can’t pull their own weight and to redeploy all the smart energetic journalists who can find the great stories and push them out to print, web and video. Some papers still have lots of talent, but they must push it to the front so readers can find it and find that they like it. Papers who continue to bury the smart people (or have already driven them away) will not make the cut. With the current recession, if newspapers don’t move quickly, the market will crush them.

The whole rant is a great read. Roger Black rocks it. But it is too late?