Nick Bergus Thoughts on what media do, and can do better, and other things

Earlier this week, Gannett slashed at least 1,900 jobs by one tally. The Des Moines Register and the Iowa City Press-Citizen are among the Iowa newspapers Gannett owns and both saw layoffs; 41 at the Register and 11 at the Press-Citizen. Sure the economy is in bad shape, and newspapers have been shedding jobs everywhere, [...]

The day after Thanksgiving is usually a slow news day but never fear, dear journalist, there is a HUGE cultural event that demands coverage! Time to throw everything you got at it! Luckily you had the forethought to build a database. Now make sure you’ve got a Twitter hashtag set. Then, on Friday, get some [...]

If only we could have historic events every day, maybe newspapers wouldn’t be in such trouble. Some very nice A1s ran this morning. The nicest A1 I saw was from Mr. Obama’s hometown tabloid, the Chicago Sun-Times. Simple. The Des Moines Register‘s was simple and effective and I’m a fan of not trying to make [...]

Right above Kurt Michael Friese’s column in today’s Press-Citizen is Michael Knock’s column all about Kurt Michael Friese. But nowhere in the 3,000-inch story (a Q-and-A style piece takes up the majority of the the feature front and then jumps inside for another half-page of broadsheet real estate) about Mr. Friese’s new book does anyone [...]