'Tis the season for more stupidity

I know, I know. 'Tis the season to be jolly and merry, but the continuing stupidity of media managers staggers me. Newspaper jobs took a steep decline last year with the bulk of them in newsrooms. The Newsosaur blog has come nice thoughts on what's been happening (and be sure to read the comments for more).

To those struggling managers who sigh and say, "Well, things are bad so we had to cut somewhere," I reply: It's all about content and how stupid are you to cut content when we know there is a direct line between content and readers/viewers and profits?

Last night I was talking about something similar with a friend. I'm fortunate enough to live in a city -- Milwaukee -- where the newspaper does good work. On what it can. Its problem is that it has cut back so much that it can't cover most news. Its three Pulitzers in four years and innumerable other great investigative pieces don't make up for the fact its not even covering the basics -- like the revolution going on in our state after state government was take over by a fringe. My friend's comment? "That's why Patch is handing them their lunch." And Patch is doing it with people who were pushed out of the Journal Sentinel. Am I getting more news from Patch than from the Journal Sentinel? No. But I am getting more news from the variety of Internet locations, including some very sharp blogs.

Meanwhile the Journal Sentinel continued its layoffs. And they included secretaries and photographers -- but not CEOs or vice presidents. They don't produce content.