What if you fired every reporter who won a Pulitzer?
You’d be retarded, right?
I don’t know how I missed this last Friday, but the Washington Post just fired Michael Tunison for discrediting the publication.
How did Tunison discredit the Post? He wrote a successful sports blog that now gets about 22,000 unique visitors per day.
If I were running the Post, I’d have tried to buy the blog. Then you’d be encouraging your reporters to get out there and develop good web properties and personalities, because hey, if it works out, you’ll buy it from them!
There are kinks in the idea, of course. You obviously don’t want all your breaking news reporters starking political pundit blogs. But I think throwing away a reporter who has just demonstrated an ability to build a successful online media property in his spare time is a particularly myopic management decision.
Eat Sleep Publish is a Seattle-based blog that explores the difficulties and opportunities currently facing the publishing industry.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow. I completely agree…that’s incredible. I mean, seriously.
I think it’s only a matter of time before more newspaper management starts to recognize the value of the reporters they have who are willing to put themselves out there online and gain a following from it.
I know of managers who all but ignore the few reporters working—and in some cases excelling—at online work, and it is very discouraging.
The newspapers that refuse to embrace this new talent will find themselves hopelessly behind the competition when the industry emerges from the changes it’s undergoing.
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