Deatch watch

Members of the Indianapolis Newspaper Guild have lauched a "Save The Star" campaign complete with downdown billboard, an effort that can most charitably be called misguided:

Bemoaning years of job cuts and pay freezes, the guild is going public with its disdain for Gannett, which owns the Indianapolis Star and 80 other community newspapers, along with USA Today and other publishing businesses.

[. . .]

The newspaper lost more than 80 jobs in June, the latest in a series of cost-cutting moves that have trimmed the staff in recent years.

"We've had significant hits to our suburban coverage, our business coverage, our features coverage. We have fewer reporters in the newsroom, and there's just simply not as many things we can get to," said Bobby King, guild president. "We still have a lot of good people there, and we're doing a lot of award-winning work, but it's getting harder and harder."

About 700 cuts were made across the company as Gannett and other newspaper owners are flailing to sustain their businesses in the midst of an advertising downturn that began in 2006 and the emergence of a plethora of alternative sources for news.

Guild members claim that the Star is very profitable and that Indianapolis' earnings are being siphoned to pay for executive compensation it believes is exorbitant.

I have no idea if the Star's profits are still healthy or even obscene or whether they're sending enormous amounts of money to prop up other papers, but I do know the stresses newspapers are under these days because of dwindling ad revenue and pressure from new competing sources of news and information.  I doubt very much if the Star is immune from these pressures, and it seems highly unlikely that the guild's remedies would do anything but make the situation worse. Keep more people on at higer guild-negotiated salaries? In a profession with shrinking revenue and readership?

This just in -- you still don't like us:

Record numbers of Americans consider the news media to be “immoral,” “inaccurate,” and “biased,” a new poll says.

A plurality of Americans, 42 percent, said that the press was “immoral,” compared to 38 percent who viewed the news media as “moral” - a record high according to an annual Pew Research Poll on the dedia:

Whew, guess I understated that a little -- you hate us more than ever. And you're tough graders, too. Yes, we're often inaccurate and frequently biased. We have lots of other faults, too, such as only reluctantly admitting our mistakes and not always revealing what our agendas are. But immoral? Are we only accidentally immoral occasionally, which is the normal human condition? Or are we frequently and deliberately immoral? No, on second though, don't tell me; I'll figure it out.