Kelly Bostian

[Oklahomabassin]

 

[RETOKSQUID]

So what happened? Not towing the woke line, or something else?

 

[Oklahomabassin]

So what happened? Not towing the woke line, or something else?

I have no idea. I just shared the info.

 

[Glocktogo]

I’m gonna go with a lack of funding for the position. Everyone knows that traditional newspapers are on borrowed time, even with e-readership. There are simply too many competitors for ad revenues in today’s many formats. It used to just be print, tv and radio, but those days are long gone.

 

[FrankNmac]

From https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2020/were-tracking-layoffs-at-lee-enterprises-newspapers/

The Tulsa (Oklahoma) World laid off at least 10 journalists Monday, Poynter has learned.

The World is owned by Lee Enterprises, which bought 31 newspapers from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway earlier this year.

Journalists laid off at the World are the latest in a growing list of media job losses caused by the pandemic and a string of layoffs at Lee newspapers in the past two weeks. We’ll continue updating this story with more if we learn of them.

Previously, Lee journalists were laid off at The (Lynchburg, Virginia) News & Advance, The (Fredericksburg, Virginia) Free Lance-Star, The Richmond (Virginia) Times-Dispatch, The (Charlottesville, Virginia) Daily Progress, The (Greensboro, North Carolina) News & Record, the The Winston-Salem (North Carolina) Journal, the Casper (Wyoming) Star Tribune, the Omaha (Nebraska) World Herald, the (Scottsbluff Nebraska) Star-Herald, The Grand Island (Nebraska) Independent, The (Bloomington, Illinois) Pantagraph and The (Decatur, Illinois) Herald & Review. We count at least 29 layoffs from those newspapers. You can see our full list here.

Poynter has emailed Lee Enterprises for comment and will update this story if we hear back.

As we previously reported, “Lee owns newspapers in 25 states, including the St. Louis (Missouri) Post-Dispatch, the Tulsa (Oklahoma) World and the Omaha (Nebraska) World-Herald. At the beginning of the year, the company bought 31 daily newspapers, including The Buffalo News, from BH Media Group for $140 million.”

Like many other media organizations at the onset of the pandemic, Lee previously instituted pay cuts and furloughs.

The Tulsa World previously laid off seven people from its design desk earlier this month. It also announced this weekend a leadership change. Executive editor Susan Ellerbach will retire at the end of September and will be replaced by Jason Collington, a 20-year veteran of the World. Both Ellerbach and Collington said on Monday they had no comment on the layoffs.

 

[Oklahomabassin]

I posted in hunting and fishing since he was the outdoors editor. If it should be moved, please do so.

 

[TwoForFlinching]

I’m gonna go with a lack of funding for the position. Everyone knows that traditional newspapers are on borrowed time, even with e-readership. There are simply too many competitors for ad revenues in today’s many formats. It used to just be print, tv and radio, but those days are long gone.

This right here. Print media is dead. It has been dying for a long time, and it will continue to die further in the communities where corporations are buying up papers. They lay off to temporarily pad the bottom line. They bring in news off the wire to fill the gaps. As local news disappears, subscribers dwindle, and before too long, several papers will merge into one, they'll pad the bottom line with even more layoffs, the cycle will continue. I almost feel bad for them, but they had every opportunity to embrace the digital world, but got caught thinking they were invincible because "it's always been this way."

TV is going through the same thing. Station in SWOK merged, laid off half the staffs, and half the time our meteorologist is forecasting from a different state.

Most radio companies (mom & pop, rural, OKC and Tulsa corporate outfits) now employ virtually all part time employees now even though, oddly enough, radio has outsold tv for the last few years being the better media outlet. Radio companies that embraced streaming are doing very well in the face of a million streaming apps, those who didn't are suckling the dead pig hustling $6 commercials. I feel bad for them.

 

[SoonerP226]

Print media is dead.

Well, of course it is. Have you ever tried to feed a live tree through a press?

Most radio companies (mom & pop, rural, OKC and Tulsa corporate outfits) now employ virtually all part time employees now even though, oddly enough, radio has outsold tv for the last few years being the better media outlet. Radio companies that embraced streaming are doing very well in the face of a million streaming apps, those who didn't are suckling the dead pig hustling $6 commercials. I feel bad for them.

The sad thing is that lots of radio stations tried embracing streaming back in the mid to late '90s. I used to listen to KVOO's stream from my office in Norman, and occasionally to a stream from a station in Chicago. What killed them was the royalty system; the gov't changed it, and almost overnight it went from a flourishing ecosystem to a virtual desert because the royalties structure became far too expensive for the online side of the house, and the more popular you became, the worse it got. (It has been too long, and I've forgotten a lot of the details, but they suddenly went from a royalty system with costs capped by the number of people in their broadcast area to an almost unlimited audience...)

 

[okhunter]

I saw that story today that he had been let go. It’s sad but I’m sure he will be ok.
I got to take him fishing a few years back and he did a big story in the paper on our fishing trip with my nephew.

 

[Deer Slayer]

He must have replaced Bob Bledsoe as the Outdoor Writer