The Newspaper Dead Pool Growing

More than 100 New York Newsday reporters and editors signed a letter of protest against their boss, Dennis FitzSimons for widespread cuts that have sliced about one-third of the paper’s editorial staff over the past three years.

Can you imagine 100 employees at HP or IBM doing that? Yet, the software segment has lost tens of thousands of jobs over the past five or six years.

“In its six years of ownership, Tribune has damaged Newsday as an instrument of public information and accountability and, for that matter, as a business,” the letter said. The protest was organized by the Guild union editorial workers.

Dean Baquet, who publicly spoke out against making repeated cuts in the Los Angeles Times – reported here at “Mick’s Place” – was sacked and is looking for work.

I think there are obvious signs of a drift from reality among the journalists and their self proclaimed “Fourth Estate.”