Falling Star

On the final episode of the TV series "Gilmore Girls", Yale graduate Rory Gilmore (as played by Alexis Bledel) announces she is going to work for an online magazine, covering the Barack Obama presidential campaign. This came after she loses her dream job of working as an intern for the New York Times.

The point here (besides the admission that I actually watched "Gilmore Girls") is that if budding journalists need a place to start their careers, newspapers aren't the place to go.
They're losing readers and revenue to new technologies, and are being sold to financiers who are more concerned about making a quick buck than they are about their readers.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune, now owned by an outfit called Avista Capital Partners after McClatchy Newspapers sold it to them for a pittance, is cutting 145 jobs (50 in the newsroom).
Despite assurances by management that the Star Tribune will not lose its quality of journalism with the cutbacks, everyone is up in arms over the future of the newspaper, and it's not hard to see why.

There will be more local coverage with a suburban focus, and less on the national and world scene, leaving that to wire service reports. Some columnists and beat writers will either be reassigned or eliminated. More money will be put into the Strib's website at the expense of the printed version.

Meaning? The new Strib will resemble your typical suburban newspaper. Only this one comes out seven days a week, and have less room for press release filler and human interest junk.

Another reason the Strib is making news as well as reporting it these days is Par Ridder, the paper's new publisher. His family used to own the paper across the river, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, as part of the Knight-Ridder chain until they sold it to--whaddya know--McClatchy. But not for long because, through a complicated deal, MediaNews now owns the Pioneer Press.

Ridder is the focus of a lawsuit by the Pioneer Press, alleging that he and other former employees absconded with trade secrets in laptops when they moved across the river to their longtime rivals. It's going through the legal system as we speak.

All of which makes the Rory Gilmores of the world reconsider their career choices, and those of us who still peruse the newspaper over a cup of Triple Skim Latte wondering whether less news is really more.