The Humboldt Herald

maybe newspapers should print the TRUTH instead of printing feelgood stories about the police, politicians and bloated personalities.

nobody wants to read manufactured news.

not anymore

newspapers are responsible for much that is wrong with our current climate - they never ask real questions..... they just parroted the GOP talking points.

newspapers deserted the citizens of the U.S.

It's only fitting that we desert them.
 

Blame Dean Singleton. He runs his newspapers like sweatshops. Anybody who has worked at the Times-Standard or who knows somebody who works or who has worked at the Times-Standard understands what I'm saying here.

I went to J-school 20 years at San Jose State. Many of my classmates, the best and the brightest, went to the Mercury News, SF Chronicle, or the Contra Costa Times. The Merc and Co Co Times were owned by Knight-Ridder, one of the top companies to work for in the profession. The Chronicle was owned by the de Young family back then. I haven't been in touch with them for years, but I can imagine their dismay when Hearst Corp. bought the Chron in 2000 and their absolute horror when Singleton bought the Merc and Co Co Times.

These are bad times indeed for newspaper journalists in Northern California. Singleton owns most of the daily newspapers in the Bay Area.

Working at the Times-Standard is awful. The newsroom is a dark cavern with stained grungy carpet and NO windows. There are windows...on the other side of the building, which Singleton leases to the county.

Apply for a newsroom job at the Times-Standard and they will try to low-ball you when it comes time to negotiate a salary. Then they expect you to handle a work load that it is probably double the average large-market daily. They will spend nothing to improve the work environment or boost morale, which is the lowest of any newspaper I have worked at, and I have worked at several. They recently cut the newsroom morale fund, all $50 a month of it.

A couple of years ago the heater in the newsroom stopped working. As a matter of fact the heater vents would start blowing cold air. Nobody could figure out how to stop it. They would not spend the money to repair it. The newsroom staff would wear coats or have blankets wrapped around them. The night shift had the opposite problem. When they would fire up the press at night, the newsroom would go from bone-chilling cold to unbearably hot in a space of about 30 minutes. This went on for months.

In 20 years of working in Journalism, my worst experience was the local Dean Singleton newspaper. I worked there for 18 months until I couldn't stand it any longer. I quit without having a job...so did another reporter, a very good one. It took me about a week to find a job that paid an hourly rate nearly double what I was earning at the Times-Standard. People who have left the Times-Standard newsroom recently, and there have been several, like to say they got out...and they got out at the right time because as bad as it is now it looks like it's going to get worse.

You can walk in to one of the local personnel services and find an unskilled job that pays more than the Times-Standard pays journalists who have years and years of experience.

That is why I have been so quick to defend friends who still work in the newsroom...Faulk, Driscoll, Durant, et. al. ...when they are criticized on the blogs. I know the pressure they are under to produce on a daily basis and the horrid work environment they must do it in.

And that is why the Media Maven really irks me. She has her cush job on the state payroll with all the bennies, and she writes these asinine critics of working journalists who slave their days away in Dean Singleton's news dungeon while living paycheck to paycheck.

So the next time one of you anons feel the urge to take a cheap shot at Faulk, Driscoll, Durant, etc., please understand what they are enduring already.
 

Wow, thanks for your comments, Andrew.
 

Why don't they quit and go to the reporter then?
 

The internet gives millions of people greater say in deciding what is and what is not news. The elites who have exclusively held this power are soiling their shorts as it slips from their grasps. I say good riddance to them and their shitty product.

10:15 - You are an idiot to make the sweeping statement that newspapers parrot GOP talking points. While obviously some do, it is just as obvious that most do not. That's a fact and it doesn't matter one bit if you agree.
 

The Internet is not to blame. Newspaper readership has been declining for decades. Blame apathy.
 

7:32 am

YOU are the idiot!
newspapers gave bush a free ride after 911 ...

911

Hell, the papers didn't even investigate all the inconsistencies and impossibilities about what happened on 911.

And that's their JOB.

Instead, the parroted the GOP talking points about fictitious WMD and fake-o "terror levels"... duct tape.... anthrax....

And now, it's the GOP target IRAN.

So.... 7:32....

YOU are the idiot, and you probably WORK for one of the traitorous newspapers who helped sell our country to the dogs.

Go home and study your talking points for the GOP...

You're nuthin' but a Jeff gannon.
 

911 conspiracy nut. Sweet.
 

Shout out to Andrew Bird for doing a great job of reminding us to be thankful to Driscoll, Rushton, Faulk and others, despite their shortcomings, and despite their hardships, for staying in the newspaper trenches. Nicely put.