The Boston Herald has a columnist name Margery Eagan who also does a talk radio show. I've been reading her for years. She's something of a "recovering liberal" who is capable of spitting out a cogent thought now and then. Anyway, on her radio show she was talking about hiring minority journalists at The Herald. she actually admitted that The Herald was dismissing qualified white male candidates because in her words "qualified white male candidates were a dime a dozen." The Heralds struggle, according to her, was finding qualified minority candidates who apparently are not a "dime a dozen".
I remember listening to this in my car dumbfounded. How's that hiring strategy working out for The Herald? Or for newspapers in general? How about looking for the most qualified candidate and forget about the skin color/gender? And The Herald is the "conservative" paper in Boston. Christ almighty. Is it any wonder that newspapers are on a path to extinction?

The solution is to not read the papers. Then these idiots won't have a job. I live in east austin, hispanic-land for sure (remember when the east side of a city was black? Does that exist anywhere anymore?). I have no issue with legal immigrants who learn english and are productive. I do have issue with those who sneak here, and try to make us mexico. Many schools on my side of town now literally post all signage in spanish...only. I imagine they teach that way too. Absurd and should be illegal.

I can speak a smattering of spanish, but generally refuse to. If someone is trying to speak english, I am happy to help find words and be patient, and reciprocate in spanish. But someone who just thinks we should all cater to the spanish-speaking, no. Learn english. I wish there was some way to turn in suspected illegals, but I've searched INS (or what used to be INS) and can't find such a link anywhere.

I don't remember when journalists had heart or cynicism. Must have been before my time. All I've ever seen of them is idiocy.

Between 1982 and 1989 I had this magical power: Every time I moved to a city, one of its newspapers folded (or the complementary morning/evening edition from a single publisher was withdrawn). Four cities in a row... The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner was my last victim. (Or should we say most recent?)

But after twenty years in LA, I have no memory of the LA Times as an expression of the best of this city. Even with the riots, quakes, fires and murders, these may well have been the times that Los Angeles gave the best lives to people...

But you'd never have guessed that from reading the paper. Of course there were individual columns that were admirable. But not only was its coverage of the leading industries (aerospace, showbiz) negligent... It's editorial obsessions were the shallow, petty, isolated fears of a middle-class teenager, a timid fool who could describe human encounters only as fraught, wounding psychodrama. The fool nonetheless grew up to find inexplicable success in the newspaper business.

Well, that success is coming to an end. I hope these people find work. But what's happening in the economy nowadays is that people are demanding value for a paycheck. The writers and editors of the Los Angeles Times may not be able to make money in mass communications anymore.

But that's OK.

"...editorial obsessions were the shallow, petty, isolated fears of a middle-class teenager, a timid fool who could describe human encounters only as fraught, wounding psychodrama."

Crid, that's nicely poetic.

Do you suppose Hector Tobar speaks Elefante?

I don't think I've ever lived in a city that had a decent mainstream paper. Here in Portage/Kalamazoo where I grew up, the Kalamazoo Gazette has always had fairly low quality writing, that has only gotten far worse with the years. The Lansing State Journal has some of the worse writing I've ever seen - Journal articles sound very much like the sort of writing you get from a high school paper. And the Oregonian, Portland's mainstream paper is only slightly superior to the Lansing State Journal.

At least in Lansing and Portland, there are some decent alt-weeklies. I found it notable when a very good writer left the Journal to write for Lansing's alt-weekly - initially with a cut in pay. But she managed to get a syndicated column fairly quickly. Why did she leave, you might ask? Because after investigating and writing an article as tasked, she was told that it was too biased. The reality was that it came out with some unpleasant, thoroughly verified facts about an important Journal advertiser.

And people wonder why alternative media is becoming so very popular.

For full disclosure and great irony, I have sent in sample pieces to the Gazette, which is looking for freelance writers, after laying off most of their newsroom. A friend who still works there assured me that my lack of journalism credentials wouldn't be a problem. They're apparently far more interested in decent writing. It's a longshot though, they would have to pay fairly well for me to leave my new job. The flexibility of schedule is attractive though - I start school the week of Jan 12.

I'm sure the demise of print media is entirely coincidental. They will blame craigslist, but I will not pay for political hectoring by my inferiors.

Our two local papers here in central CT are The Hartford Courant and the New Britain Herald (which also publishes several other towns papers).

Both suck eggs. I can find a grammatical or spelling error in just about every edition I pick up. I get a headache trying to read them.

And they persist in calling me trying to sell me their papers.

I get better local news from the free paper that shows up in my mailbox once a week, why should I pay 50 cents to a dollar an issue for a paper that is difficult to read, and from which all of the non-local news is six hours old by the time I get it?

Here's a Publisher's Weekly quote about Tobar's book:

But he struggles to define the self-confident "Latinoness" he believes will "change the course of American history," locating it variously in a supposed resistance to "good, Protestant, money-making order"; a rejection of cultural boundaries; a taste for bright colors; and the iconography of Che Guevara.

Sounds like a recipe for success.