Dec 22, 2009

Daily News reporter departs

After five years as a beat writer for the Los Angeles Daily News, Sue Doyle is leaving to do freelance. LA Observed has a memo from Daily News editor Carolina Garcia praising Doyle's work and promising a goodbye cake. You can read it here.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dunno if Garcia had a Freudian slip, was being ironic or is just clueless, but her memo infers that leaving the Daily News to freelance is "bigger and better things."

Anonymous said...

After reading Garcia's memo and following what's been going on at the Daily News, I can't help but think the higher ups are getting exactly what they want: an empty newsroom.

I have been working on my Master's thesis as a journalism major, and in the course of conducting a content analysis of the Daily News over a two year period, some trends have emerged. I haven't finished my quantitative analysis, but just by eyeballing the numbers I can see that wire stories make up an average 80 percent of the front page of the Daily News.

I also haven't completed my qualitative analysis, but if I could offer my subjective views, many of the better stories written by the Daily News' own reporters appear to get buried throughout what seems to be an inconsistent design throughout the paper.

Again, subjectively speaking, the newspaper's overall content can only be described in a word: terrible.
If I could offer a second, even more emotional perspective, in a word, it would be: shameful.

There are some very good reporters and writers there, but they seem wasted.

Anonymous said...

To the scholar at 10:53:

What you are seeing happening at the Daily News has happened to newspapers across the country. Staffs have been slashed to their bare bones. You would think someone obtaining a master's degree and working on an alleged two-year analysis of one newspaper would have the intellect and insight to see the big picture instead of one narrow view of one single newspaper.

newjunkie said...

good for doyle. yes, 10:08: out of the Daily News or LANG is always better. Have you not woken up yet? Take an inventory, doood. 10:53: you are soooo entirely right. YOU should consult for the Daily News. They hired high paid consultants to tell them what was wrong and what to do. They decimated the place. It's one big wire paper AND they can't even report the news in their own backyard. Such a shame. 3million people and a lot of local news and they miss it all.

Anonymous said...

congrats sue doyle.

Anonymous said...

But, they have a sign on the building right off the 101.

Anonymous said...

To the comment made at 2:22,

Many graduate students have undertaken similar projects by following the progress of their hometown newspapers over a certain period of time. My thesis project is one example of the broader picture that shows the result of staff shortages.

Anonymous said...

don't bother to defend yourself. people in the business are bitter as they should be. any large city newspaper has suffered financially and that has caused shortages of local columns and news. it has been going downhill for a number of years and despite some people saying it will return, they are wrong. when the business was a monopoly, and it was, it required little vision and leadership. in most cases that is exactly what newspapers spawned and now they are left with dying readership, antiquated technology, and no solutions in sight. this group of papers is among the worst.

Anonymous said...

To "December 23, 2009 2:22 PM": Take a chill-pill man. Nobody likes to be told the truth...

Anonymous said...

Gee, I hope they don't run out of cake!

Anonymous said...

I sure hope Lean Dean read the Journ Master's comment and fires all the LANG publishers and editors. This is how those in charge here have ruined the LANG papers for years and I hope he wakes up and gets brand new blood in there. If any higher up reads this, their head should hang so low that they quit TODAY in shame of what a terrible job they've done AND blamed it all on everyone else but themselves.

Lean Dean, fire them all TODAY.

All you top editors, do yourselves a favor and quit before you ruin more people's lives.

Anonymous said...

Dec 24th poster at 9:34...you can count on that when there is peace in the middle east.