What's up

What's up at the TD?  Watercoolerredux has generated a less than underwhelming response. Meanwhile, the news from Goochland includes a bear spotted by Wynne and the cats in our yard a couple of weeks ago and deer have destroyed my zucinni (I can't that word) and snaps. I have a bumper crop of sweet corn, egg plant and peppers of all sorts. Humming birds are waring over their feeder,  and the Japanese beetles are out in force. Take care.

What's spadea?

A Times-Dispatch staffer, Anonymous by name, complained  recently about the nefarious, much unloved spadea, detested by readers and staff alike.

Anonymous wrote: Why the paper chose to waste its resources on today's (last Tuesday's, I believe) final comics spadea is a mystery. People are losing their jobs at this company, and the T-D waste paper and ink -- money -- on a three-page section that tells readers the comics no longer are in that section. Wasn't the  A1 story enough? I fear the paper is making itself look foolish. If the readers hated the spadea so much, why did we give them another.

To tell the truth until now I had no idea what a spadea is or was. Now I know, and I'm a much better person for knowing, or not. In a subsequent E-mail, Anonymous explained that a spadea is a pull-away section with a full back and a half-page attached (pasted) on a section front. 

About a month ago, the paper started putting the comics on a spadea, because the paper had killed some Flair features. Spadeas were the flaps that on the Metro and Sports  section fronts and hid the left half of those sections. 

Damn, now I know those things I ripped off the section fronts and threw away actually had a name. Why make reading a  newspaper difficult unless you really want to annoy your readers? 

"My beef was beef was that the T-D printed a spadea to tell readers, we aren't printing it anymore. It seemed like we were taunting readers as well as wasting resources," Anonymous wrote.

I call that two-fer: Irking readers and wasting money. Multi-tasking at the T-D.

"It wasn't a big deal compared with other crap going on here, but it was just another example of what we're doing wrong," Anonymous concluded.

Repackaging woes

This from a TD staffer, whose name is Anonymous:

A friend who's been retired to Florida for some years complains that the St. Pete (Petersburg) Times has just gone through its second revision/redesign in 19 months and really  "screwed it up." He can't find any of his favorite features. His solution--look into subscribing to the Tampa Trib (Tribune). Reckon he's in for a shock. Anyway, we are not alone in the revise-and-repulse field.

I feel the Florida retiree's and TD staffer's pain. Redesign is often the first refuge newspaper executives as circulation, advertising shrink and sphincters constrict. Repackage the product. The product often comes through the process more colorful but smaller and with less news. 

I was a reporter (not a journalist) for nearly 40 years. I always felt that news sells newspapers. Rather than frittering time and money away on a new package more money and resources should be invested in finding and reporting news.  But what do I know, I was a Russian major. Wasson

At last.

Finally, a comment. I was on the verge of spiking the blog for lack of interest. The comment was to the Dispirited post. Remember to read or post a comment,  simply click on "comments" at the bottom of the post. Thanks,   Anonymous One.

Although this blog is primarily for Times-Dispatch staffers to discuss their newspaper, TD readers are also welcome to join in.

Anonymous refers in his comment to 20l -- 20 localities in the Richmond area. The 20l idea was introduced shortly before I retired in December. Those localities are the ones the TD supposedly covers. The idea, I think and I'm not quite sure, is to have news items from these 20 localities as frequently as possible. They tend to be "briefs" -- short pieces that tell readers the paper cares about their localities. But I fear they serve more as fillers.

Years ago when newsprint was cheap and space was plentiful, fillers were kept on file to plug  small holes that sometimes occurred when a story was too short. We all wrote fillers.

The all-time champion filler at The Richmond News Leader, which was merged with Times-Dispatch in 1992, was provided by reporter, now retired, Barbara Green. It went something like this: To stay cool,  Kangeroos  lick their armpits.

These cool spring days won't last forever folks. Think about it.  Wasson

Dispirited

A newsroom overcome by the blahs. No spirit. All in a funk. That's how the TD newsroom was described to me today. I haven't set foot in the East Grace Street newsroom since Dec. 27 when I walked out the door to retire after nearly 40 years with the Times-Dispatch and The News Leader, the TD's afternoon sister paper. 

I assume the reporter who told me this had a spot on assessment of the newsroom environment. Apropos of something perhaps, many years ago a News Leader business writer and good friend told me he looked up from his desk one day and saw the paper's chief political writer puking in his wastebasket. He said he turned his head away and  saw a fellow business writer picking his nose and admiring his finds. "I knew then I had to get out of here," he told me. He went on to become the publisher of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The newspaper business is a glum place to be. Circulation  continues its slide. Publishers and editors frantically search for the magic bullet that will make everything better, much, much better. Mostly they come up shooting blanks.  No gimmick is left untried, no deck chair is left un-re-arranged.  So, is it so the folks of TD newsroom are sad, depressed and apathetic?  NNPERO.

A bit of business

There don't appear to be ravening hoards beating on the door for a dip in the cooler. To post a comment, click on comments  and comment away.  If you want to reach me by E-mail, I have two:  wasson@wildblue.net and bill.wassn@gmail.com. If you E-mail me and overly long, somewhat incoherent note, I may fiddle with it and post it as a comment from our favorite ouzo-besottted Greek philosopher, Anonymous. wasson

RAG

RAG, a group of former, mostly retired TD and  News Leader staffers, heard Gordon Hickey, Gov. Kaine's press aid explain on Thursday the ends and out being working for Kaine. He caught my attention when he remarked that TD stories coming the Capitol  are often incomplete and full of wholes. Hickey didn't fault the reporters who wrote the stories. He faulted editors who demanding no more than 10 inches on stories.

How often have you heard that the newspaper's Web page aims to give the reader a taste of what's in the paper and to send them running to there for more detailed  accounts. 

Several dozen former staffers attended the luncheon. It was fun picking out those who had left the paper with pink slips in hand. Wasson.