Vasché: He just doesn’t get it.
Margaret Randazzo, President of The Modesto Bee (aka McClatchy Modesto), wrote a piece last Sunday about how The Bee cares about the local community and despite McClatchy missing the mark on keeping pace with the news industry, The Bee still has a strong death grip on local information reporting. Oh and that people still read The Bee (No really, they swear! Just forget the fact that statistics everywhere say newspaper readership is declining more and more every year).
A lot of people left comments on her posting noting some pretty good points. Everything from The Bee losing focus of it’s advertisers to The Bee pandering to city politics and even The Bee moving all of their printing business to Sacramento. It might not be far fetched to say that
The Modesto Bee might end up being just a bureau of The Sacramento Bee. One good commentor pointed out the fact that The Bee has dropped their workforce considerably, losing many members of their editorial staff and has started reprinting wire stories. That leads to another question: Why read ModBee.com if they are just reprinting Associated Press wire stories that are available on more credible, professional and easier to use websites like CNN.com or
FOXNews.com?
Well on ModBee.com yesterday, Mark Vasché, Editor and Vice President of McClatchy Modesto, decided to spat back at the commentors. In a posting titled “Golden Age of Newspapers II - still exciting but more challenging,” he reminisces of the good ol’ days when readers could only turn to The Bee for news and was no doubt missing the days when advertisers dropped serious coin to be in his “paper of the past”. He then proceeded to mention a good friend of his who mistakenly thought he was being relocated to Sacramento, just like his printing press. Funny, huh?
Then Mark started in on the commenters of Margaret’s posting. Saying that they were wrong and that The Modesto Bee does have the communities best interests at heart, despite overwhelming appeal by readers and advertisers for better reporting and better advertising opportunities.
It’s OK Mark, I know you don’t get it. However, I imagine as an editor it would be fun to be a spin man. You should write about that. That would be more interesting.
Oh and it must be nice to be a monopoly in the area. You should write about that too.
Related:
Modesto Bee buyouts update
Report: more job cuts at Modesto Bee -- 4th round of cuts this year
Modesto Bee to eliminate 33 full-time and 127 part-time employees
Modesto Bee may move production to Sacramento
McClatchy's Bloody Monday update
Buyouts offered to 100 at McClatchy's Modesto Bee
3 comments:
They don't get it so why should we? He'll have a job that's all he cares about.
Quote: "Then Mark started in on the commenters of Margaret’s posting. Saying that they were wrong and that The Modesto Bee does have the communities best interests at heart..." Is that why you are pulling up stakes and adding to the unemployment rolls in the area? (Sept 28 150 will be hitting the streets.) Hank VanDerveen at the Merced Sun Star was quoted as saying they have a commitment to the(ir) community so they are upgrading the capacity of their press. What about Modesto? As far as reader ship, you know the numbers Mark...they keep slipping little by little...hovering in the low 80,000 to high 70,000...a bit more on weekends. The free throwaways get that much circulation...one gets the ads (zoned for their areas) and doesn't have to wade through all the junk you call news, and doesn't have to deal with all the paper to recycle.
If you want to keep your readership, 1. DO NOT insult your readers, 2. Show support for the community, 3. Keep jobs here in Modesto (too late for that), 4. Print a quality product that the reader doesn't have to handle with rubber gloves.
I predict after Sept. 28, 2008, your readership will begin dropping significantly. You are beating a dead horse...You have been there long enough Mark, time to retire and please find Gary Pruitt and take him with you!
awesome comments anonymous commenter 2. thanks for spreading the news blog owner!
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