Grace under pressure

In the space of about six hours, we went from a decision to migrate a site from one CMS to another, as well as fill in for a very busy local staff to get some initial coverage up of a breaking news story.

If you missed the news, Greensburg, Kansas was destroyed by a massive tornado Friday night. GateHouse Media owns the weekly paper in Greensburg and the neighboring daily paper in Pratt.

Right up there with "the show must go on" is "the paper's gotta get out."  Howard Owens tells what they did to get the Kiowa County Signal back online after Friday night's tornado.  (One lesson learned:  Don't leave the only copy of the website password locked up in the office!)
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Hattip:  Tim Blair.

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 23:28:19 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Stupid Stupid Stupid - Part 2

The Star-Tribune cancels James Lileks.

As it happens, they've killed my column, and assigned me to write straight local news stories.

Really.

So you take your best feature writer, you know-- the one with national recognition-- and put him to writing news. How (ahem) progressive of them!  Don Surber:

Let’s see, we have to move online and attract readers by presenting interesting copy — so let’s kill Lileks.

Surber goes on to posit "another side to the story."  I fear that the story is that Lileks isn't PC-lefty enough for the current PC-lefty regime at the Strib (although his columns weren't political), and that this is a calculated move to "encourage" him to leave.  Ideology trumps audience!  The mark of today's newspapers!

Just one more example of how to kill your business:  Keep on eliminating the  things that attract customers, and sooner or later you won't have any.

UPDATE:  Dave Barry:  "Incredible. [L]ike the Miami Heat deciding to relieve Dwyane Wade of his basketball-playing obligations so he can keep stats."

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Via just about everybody, with probably lots more to come, but especially Hugh Hewett, who has already made a list of "10 places I expect to recruit him within days."

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 15:51:09 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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