Are Greenwich's Failed Mainstream Newspapers Going To Get Screwed Over By Local Bloggers And Citizen Journalists?
Can Greenwich's fired traditional editors and reporters at "Our Greenwich" really become real citizen journalists like Bill Clark and Chris Fountain?
Why does Greenwich Time managing editor Jim Zorba always play to Hearst Newspaper's multitude of weaknesses.
Clueless Greenwich Time editors need to understand that quality matters and they are not delivering what town residents want.
The Greenwich Time editors are using an old business model that says we will make loads of cash, because we are selling town residents things something they can't easily get elsewhere.
This Greenwich Time strategy worked, back in pre-Internet days. In fact, it did work, which is why the daily newspaper used it.
Even when the Free Weekly newspapers came and gave the Greenwich Time's product away for free, the strategy mostly still worked, because the Greenwich Time delivered daily up to date reports, while the free papers made you wait for a weekly recap of the news.
Once Greenwich residents starting to get their news directly from wire services and foreign papers via the Internet the local rag became an unnecessary middleman.
While the barriers to entry in the local hard-news reporting area are fairly high—there is starting to be some excellent reporting by Greenwich bloggers.
Clueless Greenwich newspaper editors want to define bloggers and citizen journalists as people conducting journalism in their spare time with no institutional.
What the clueless Greenwich newspaper editors are starting to learn is that bloggers are citizen journalists who are often working nearly full-time as reporters with journalistic balls.
Citizen Journalists may not have traditional training, but they are building new institutions in Greenwich that is producing the hard hitting journalism that town residents crave?
For example:
Here at Greenwich Roundup, and at other Greenwich blogs, we are constantly scooping the local newspapers with exclusive or breaking town news stories.
Hard-news reporting—covering the actual facts of all sides of a Greenwich story—remains the "killer app" for our local newspaper.
But clueless Greenwich Time editors like, Jim Zorba are not making proper use of their structural advantages - they constantly publish town press releases with out ever questioning authority.
Greenwich Time editors and reporters are afraid to rock the boat and to let the chips fall where they may. No one reads a Greenwich Time story and goes WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING !!!
Greenwich's well paid full-time journalists in supposedly competing newsrooms are not properly covering our town.
If Greenwich's newspapers truly need to start competing for stories - it is essential to their survival.
Greenwich editors need create journalists with the time and resources and experience to dig into the tough questions. We need journalists to work in teams and in competing newsrooms to goad other journalists along. And these journalists need strong institutions that can stand up to people in political or commercial power when they are pissed off at the coverage they receive.
We don't need mainstream Greenwich editors and reporters afraid to investigate police department abuses.
We don't need a video cameras capturing a weapon being fired in Greenwich high school and timid Greenwich reporters who are afraid to fight to bring it too the public.
We don't need a Greenwich reporter get fired, because of real estate agencies complain.
We don't need car ads being placed before the welfare of a 78 year old Greenwich farmer.
We don't need a $75,000 loss at the Greenwich PTA's being swept under the rug as Greenwich reporters and editors look on totally clueless.
Good journalism will invariably antagonize someone in power in Greenwich. If it doesn't, it probably isn't very good journalism.
The Greenwich Citizen, the Greenwich Post and the Greenwich Time need to stop going along to get along with the Greenwich power structure.
Greenwich Roundup and other bloggers are starting to challenge the local mainstream newspapers, taking advantage of clueless editors who are not pushing their reporters to bring hard-news back on the front page.
The crisis in Greenwich mainstream journalism is due to mismanagement of news gathering process by incompetent editors and executives.
Right now, the Greenwich Citizen, the Greenwich Post and the Greenwich Time are still in a much better position overall to cover actual news than citizen journalists.
They've got the infrastructure, but for the most part their reporters lack training, experience and journalistic balls.
Whatever advantages Greenwich newspapers have is constantly eroding day after day as technology shifts in favor of smaller operations, and as citizen journalists gain experience and audience.
Can the Greenwich Citizen, the Greenwich Post and the Greenwich Time change?
They will if their editors and publishers are half as smart as they think they are —which is to say, they probably are not going to change.
Ex-Greenwich Time Editor Joe Pisani truly believes that he is a gifted journalist, while most town residents think that he and the current crop of local editors are knuckleheads.
Ex-Greenwich Time Editor Joe Pisani and the current local editors want to blame strong institutional pressures to gut journalism.
But the fact is it is their own damn fault that Greenwich residents are fleeing the local newspapers.
The Greenwich commercial news system has failed, and so far there is little indication that it is going to be resurrected in the digital world.
Greenwich news papers need to join local bloggers and citizen journalists who are creating a local media system where the rational is to do damn good journalism and only damn good journalism.
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