Tag Archives: AGN Media

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This book will be worth reading and re-reading

This idea should have been put forth years ago.

Then again, the product it would produce wouldn’t be nearly as rich as it figures to be.

My good friend and former colleague Jon Mark Beilue has been a columnist for the Amarillo Globe-News for about seven, maybe eight years. Prior to that he was sports editor.

He is asking readers for some help selecting his “best of” columns to be included in a book the paper will publish soon.

http://amarillo.com/blog-post/jon-mark-beilue/2014-09-09/have-suggestion-lets-hear-it

Jon Mark is a community treasure. He tells a story as no one else does or can. He says the book will be 200-plus pages in length.

The brief blog item he wrote is typically self-deprecating. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, which is a sure sign of a good and talented man.

Jon Mark, though, does take his craft seriously.

Do I have a favorite? I cannot even begin to select one, or a dozen, or a truckload of columns he’s written over the years.

I’ll trust others to compile the “best of Jon Mark Beilue.” I am certain beyond any doubt it will be a keepsake volume.

local news

Media landscape changing all around us

No matter how you slice it, dice it, puree it — whatever — the media landscape is a-changin’.

Even here in the relatively staid Texas Panhandle, where the announcement came out today that the one-time newspaper of record for the region, the Amarillo Globe-News, no longer will print its editions here. It will outsource that task to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, another property owned by the parent company that owns both newspapers.

None of this is unique to the Panhandle. The question of the day is: What’s coming next?

I remain concerned about the deadlines for late-breaking news. The printed newspaper won’t contain news that breaks shortly after suppertime. But, hey, readers can catch up with the news on the paper’s online edition — if they subscribe to the printed newspaper.

Print journalism is trying to make the transition from its old form to something new. The Digital Age has arrived. Some papers are doing a better job of making that switch from one form of delivery to another. Others are struggling with it.

The biggest hang-up is making money on the digital edition. I’m not privy to ad sales techniques, so I cannot comment intelligently on how newspapers in general — and the Globe-News in particular — sell the online edition to advertisers.

I’ve heard some anecdotal evidence, though, that suggests the printed newspaper continues to outpace the digital version by a huge margin in terms of revenue generated.

So, good luck with the transition.

I don’t have any particular loyalty any longer to the people who run my local newspaper. I left daily print journalism under unhappy circumstances. My loyalty remains, though, with my friends who continue to work there.

I hope they’re strong and they can persevere through this trauma. Take my word for it, many of them are being traumatized by what they cannot predict will happen in the near or distant future.

 

local news

This news was no surprise, but it still hurts

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Have you ever heard of a development you more or less knew was coming but were still unnerved by it when it arrived?

It happened to me today with word that the Amarillo Globe-News, where I worked for 17 years and 8 months before quitting under duress, is shutting down its presses and will be printed at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, 120 miles south.

The A-J is a sister publication of the Globe-News, both of which are owned by Morris Communications out of Augusta, Ga.

Where do I begin in trying to assess what this means to what’s left of the Globe-News’s readership base?

A lengthy essay in today’s G-N by the publisher, Lester Simpson, seeks to cast this news in highly positive tones.

It’s positive, all right, if the intent is to make the G-N even more profitable than it already is. It will do so by cutting production staff, tearing out its presses and perhaps selling the material as scrap or to someone who can use the antiquated equipment. There will be cost-sharing with the A-J in trucking the papers from Lubbock to Amarillo for distribution.

What are the negatives?

Let’s start with deadlines. Simpson said the paper will continue to guarantee home delivery by 6 a.m. That means the deadlines will be set earlier in the evening, given that it will take two hours to transport the papers north on Interstate 27 for delivery. What happens, then, if news breaks at, say, 10 p.m.? It won’t be reported in the next day’s paper, given that the paper likely will have been “put to bed,” to borrow a time-honored term.

The Globe-News used to pride itself on delivering the latest news possible to its readers. That promise, it seems to me, no longer will be kept.

And what does that do to the readership base that still depends on the paper? Well, by my way of thinking, it gives those readers one less reason to subscribe. That will be revenue lost. Advertisers who buy into the paper do so with the hope of reaching more  readers, not fewer of them.

Simpson writes that the company remains committed to print journalism. It’s also seeking to enter the digital age, right along with other media companies. And what are those companies doing to compete with each other — and with other media? They’re reducing the number of days they deliver the paper to home subscribers.

Therein, I believe, lies the next step in the Globe-News’s evolution from a once-good newspaper to a still-undefined entity.

The publisher doesn’t address the next step, of course, in his essay. I wouldn’t expect him to do so.

However, that’s the trend. In my time as a Morris employee, I didn’t see much evidence of a company willing or able to resist the national media tide.

Many folks knew this day was coming. It still is a punch in the gut.

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Time really does fly by

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You’ve no doubt said it yourself: Time flies when you’re having fun.

I know how it goes.

In a couple of days, I’ll be celebrating an anniversary I never saw coming. On Aug. 30, 2012, I was told that my duties as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News would be handled by someone else. I barely knew the fellow who gave me the news. He was the then-vice president for audience at the newspaper. He’d been hired to fill a newly created position and had been on the job for about two months.

He broke the news to me: “There’s no easy to way to tell you this, but we’ve offered your job to someone else and he accepted.” I asked who it was. He told me.

This was the culmination of a “restructuring” or “reorganization” that the newspaper had initiated. My formerly autonomous department had been rolled into the newsroom operation. Everyone’s job descriptions had been reworked. I looked at my new description and thought, “Yeah, I can do this.” We were invited to apply for any job we wanted and were asked to list two “alternate” posts for which we could apply in case we didn’t get Job One.

I thought, “Hey, I’ve been doing this job for 17-plus years. I can do what they’re asking me to do.”

I was the only one involved directly in this decision who harbored that thought. The VP/audience dropped the bomb in my lap. I sat there, stunned. I caught my breath, said something to him I don’t dare repeat here, walked into my office and called my wife, then my sons. The message was the same to all of them: I’m out.

I went home. Slept well that night. Came back early the next morning and cleared out my office. Rather than apply for another job and hope that lightning would strike and I would get it, I quit. I was qualified to do one thing at the newspaper and I thought I did it pretty well. I’d had an enormously fruitful and moderately successful career over the total span of 37 years.

As near as I can recall, I was the first casualty of this “restructuring.” I was gone, out the door. (Here’s the hilarious aside: The VP/audience quit his job about a week after I walked out and returned to his old employer, the Las Vegas Sun. Suffice to say the individual who runs the Globe-News was not a happy man. My reaction when I got the news? Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?)

Why recall all this today? Well, I guess it’s time to air it out just a little. I won’t waste any effort telling you about the anger I felt at that very moment toward a number of people. Most of that anger has subsided. Some of it remains.

My prevailing attitude, though, is one of thankfulness. I’m thankful to be gone. I hated that my newspaper career ended the way it did. I was hoping for a cake and a party where some folks would say some nice things to me, thank me for my service and my dedication to our craft. Hey, not every dream comes true.

Time flies, yes?

Since then, I’ve discovered a wonderful new life. Semi-retirement is better than I thought. I’ve found new life as a blogger. I’m working part-time for an auto dealer and writing a blog for Panhandle PBS, a gig I started almost immediately after leaving the newspaper. The Panhandle PBS assignment has changed and grown a bit in recent weeks and my hope is that it will continue to grow.

I offer this essay to those who might worry about their future in print journalism. The landscape is changing right under their feet. More papers are going “digital” in their effort to report the news and comment on issues of the day. I was told the Globe-News would be embarking in a “radical new direction.”

My employer said, in effect, that I was ill-suited to take part in that journey. I had reminded him a day or two earlier that journalism today bears little resemblance to what it was when I started out in the 1970s and that the changes he was seeking amounted to a tiny fraction of what I’d already been through. That was my way of saying: I can do whatever you want me to do. Well, that plea fell on deaf ears.

What’s in store for others who are still toiling in daily print journalism? That remains a mystery.

Know this, though. If this old geezer can adapt to a new life rapidly after being punched in the gut, then there’s hope for virtually everyone else facing the uncertainty of a changing profession.

Time has flown by for me the past two years. I’m having the time of my life.

 

 

 

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Yes, this took an act of courage

Jon Mark Beilue is a longtime friend and a former colleague.

He has become — in my view, and in the view of thousands of other readers of his work — the pre-eminent wordsmith in West Texas. Maybe the entire state. Who knows? His bounds might be beyond limits.

Jon Mark acknowledged something the other day that few of us knew about him. He has been battling depression.

He made the acknowledgment in a column published in the Amarillo Globe-News. Here is the link to the column:

http://amarillo.com/news/latest-news/2014-08-12/beilue-trust-me-depression-can-strike-anyone#comment-205141

It’s worth your time to read it. I’ve already shared it with my Facebook friends. It’s going out to them once more under this blog headline, along with those who follow my Twitter postings — and blatherings.

This one, though, presents quite a special message.

Jon Mark wrote this in the wake of Robin Williams’s shocking death this past week. Williams took his own life. He, too, suffered from acute depression and, the world has learned, also from early onset of Parkinson’s disease.

Jon Mark’s column, I reckon, is intended to inform us that depression is an insidious disease that can strike anyone. It has afflicted my friend and I am so proud of him for revealing it in the manner that he did.

His courageous message is worth sharing again and again.

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'Harvested' instead of 'killed'?

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Maybe my idle mind is a little too, uh, idle this lovely Sunday afternoon.

With that, I’ll get something off my chest. It’s piddly and not too terribly significant, but it has to do — I think — with what I perceive to be a tilt toward political correctness.

Looking through my local newspaper — the Amarillo Globe-News — today, I noticed two captions under pictures on the Outdoor page of the Sports section. The pictures showed two hunters who had shot wild game. One was a water buck in South Africa; the other was a feral hog. The text under the pictures said the hunters “harvested” the animals.

This is not a new use of a common term. When I think of something being “harvested,” though, I think of cotton being stripped, of wheat being cut, of kids picking raspberries off the thorny bushes (which is what I used to do in the summer growing up in the Pacific Northwest).

Perhaps I should ask a newspaper copy editor, but short of that, I’ll pose the question here: When did the terms “shot” and “killed” become unacceptable for use in a daily newspaper in describing the act of hunting wild animals?

The animals shown today, as are the critters displayed all the time on that particular page, are pretty darn dead. Does the text below the pictures need to somehow soften for readers what they already can see with their own eyes?

Some folks — particularly those on the right — just love to criticize those who tend to use politically correct terminology rather than dealing straight up with whatever they’re trying to describe.

Is that what’s happening to our region’s hunting community, for crying out loud? Please tell me it ain’t so.