Rossibly Rerminated?

Ruh-roh!

SSsqueezed

WTIC has decided to unload Stan Simpson's radio show as a belt-tightening measure.

Meanwhile, here is the kind of thing the Courant is mind bogglingly bad at.

The above link is to Simpson's blog. Here is Simpson's column page. How do you get from his column page to his blog? Simpson may have more to say on Sunday on the similarly initialed Shelly Sindland's show.

Paper Cuts

A way to keep track of the grimness.

Plenty to cry about

Greg Morago, who took the most recent Hartford Courant buyout, is one of the few to find a happy landing, as a food editor for the Houston Chronicle.

Tuesday night saw a small -- well, smaller than in the "old days" --group gather at the Firebox on Broad Street to say goodbye to Greg, but Courant gatherings nowadays have a hard time being about one thing.

Discussion topics ranged around among myriad woes, including the plight of "vendors," a category that includes many writers who were owed money prior to the bankruptcy filing. In that category are, ironically, Morago and your Printer's Devil (who is owed $4,500). It appears that Tribune slowed or stopped payments to many of us, knowing that this fateful day would come. We are now hostages to this process and do not know when or if we will see a dime. It's high finance's way of saying Happy Holidays, schmucks!

There are, however, other people with graver worries -- people whose actual buyout packages may be tainted by the bankruptcy.

Also on the table was the Mother Ship's handling of its role in The Blago Affair.

Some of think there are, at this point, troubling holes in the story.

And yet, we made merry.

The next Curry

The Courant has to hunt up a new left-leaning columnist to replace Bill Curry, who ended his column last Sunday. How they do this will say a lot about how well they grasp the changing industry. One possible move would be to reach back toward such very able "old hands" as Michelle Jacklin and David Fink. They certainly know the territory. But a move like that is an admission that the Courant is stuck in "old news" thinking. The next four years will be about some kind of convergence of media, with a heavy emphasis on the online product. Would the Courant be better off looking for somebody with a little more digital expertise and orientation? (Maybe even somebody who likes to shoot, edit and upload video. But that might be asking too much.)

Keep an eye on NPR

Imagine that the ladder of "print" is getting slowly pulled up. Which mother ship is it getting pulled up into? We wonder if new chief Schiller will expand the part of NPR online that simulates print. And locally, they have the advantage of a strong reporting/anchoring staff. John Dankosky is becoming a brand name for them. Four years from now, all news operations will be somewhat similar -- some blend online multimedia plus broadcast. NPR and its Connecticut affiliate might be very good at that.

Should we all get along?

The storm of bad finances and perhaps a subliminal sense that we are surrounded by people who don't like us has driven former rivals into each other's arms in one market.
It's probably a trend, but would it work in Connecticut?
Tribune already has the capacity to be a multi-media news service in the Hartford market.