March 15th, 2009 
joel In the past year, the Times Publishing Company, along with most other U.S. newspaper publishers, has had to ensure a severe advertising slow down, the near-evaporation of their classified advertising cash cow to the online space, leading up to employee buyouts at the end of 2008. Nearly every day, the public has heard the drumbeat of negative news about the newspaper business: Tribune Co. goes bankrupt, the Rocky Mountain News folds, the Detroit newspapers go to limited home delivery.
However, throughout this era, the publisher of our local papers, Rosanne Cheeseman, has been conspicuously quiet. Until now.
In Sunday’s Opinion pages, Cheeseman broke her silence to reassure Erie newspaper readers that the Erie Times-News was going nowhere:
Because of the national news coverage about newspapers facing financial troubles, some readers have worried that their local newspaper is in jeopardy.
My answer is that the Erie Times-News is alive and well, and we will be here for the long term to serve you, our readers.
Why?
Erie has a healthy business climate, which is not necessarily the case in the communities where newspapers are struggling.
In the article, Cheeseman goes on to click off bullet points of how different the situation that the Erie paper finds itself in compared to the publicly-traded and heavy debt-laden big metro dailies fate. She does admit that the paper has felt the effects of the economic downturn, including a proposed 9% reduction in staffing, yet efforts made years ago have put the ETN in a much better foundational place than its counterparts.
This is good news for Erie, since the Erie Times-News remains the only source for extensive investigative reporting. They continue to carry the biggest stick when it comes to government accountability. Finally, I think that all of the budding media businesses in the online space will continue to look to them to educate and facilitate Erie advertisers as they transition into web advertising. As long as GoErie.com continues to push the rate card envelope, they are setting a standard that will benefit all of the little web guys trying to drink out of that same well.
I just hope that we will hear more and more from Ms. Cheeseman about the state of our media. This market is used to regularly hearing from our media executives, whether it was Michael Mead giving a shout out regarding a new initiative at the Times-News, or Bob Hoffman of WSEE taking City Council to task. It’s that Erie big city/small town paradox that demands transparency. Thanks to the publisher of Erie Times-News for her reassuring setting of the record straight.
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As the only consistent and credible critic of the Erie Times-News’s coverage of local news developments, I found your approbation of Ms. Cheeseman’s glib and self-serving op-ed piece naive, shallow and patronizing.
Given the negative trends at the Times-News, it was incumbent upon the putative head of the organization, who has amply demonstrated she has no inkling of responsible journalism, to try to superimpose a happy face on the newspaper’s worsening operations, most visible in its declining news and editorial content more akin to tabloid journalism. Since there is no credible alternative or independent source of information on operating conditions at the Times-News, we have only its self-centered version.
The paper’s shrinking news staff and coverage, attributed to current economic conditions, would not be so drastic if its past coverage and editorial policies had been more evenhanded. Readers are simply turned off by it’s devotion to an agenda that has more to do with local elites and special interests than the broad public interest, and its failure to provide objective, critical and comprehensive coverage of meaningful local news.
With a few notable exceptions,The Times-News’s facile and superficial coverage of county and state government operations as they affect local interests is pathetic. Rather than a part of the solution to local woes, the Times-News has demonstrated that it is a big part of the problem.
The best thing that could happen to the Erie area is that the Times-News should go under and be replaced by a newspaper more reflective of and responsive to local social and economic concerns, and committed to professional journalistic ethos and standards.
Joe,
Thanks for your comments. I’m sorry that you mistook my positive take on Ms. Cheeseman’s op-ed as meaning that I approbated her remarks and that I’m somehow naïve regarding the state of the Erie Times-News and the newspaper industry in general.
As I write, the residents of Seattle are waking up to their last Post-Intelligencer. It’s more difficult every day for the sales staffs of traditional media outlets to convince advertisers to continue to use their media. We are in the middle of a perfect storm, where the very paradigm of mass-media advertising is suspect while the economy shrinks ad dollars to a low 1.5% of GDP.
Far from shallow, I have a deep regard and understanding of the rigor it takes to generate content and fund media organizations in the best of climates, let alone this one. I have worn nearly every hat you can in the continuum of the media marketplace, from buyer and marketer to writer, television and radio producer, to sales management and human resources.
I choose to be a cheerleader for all media, their practitioners, and their consumers. I will always “use a little sugar” when calling a decision into question or asking for accountability by the gatekeepers, because I find you get better results and its just too easy to fire a cheap shot. I will continue to speak truth into my opinions, while holding to civility and good cheer. That’s just who I am.
As far as the ETN crashing and burning to be replaced by some nebulous new paper that would meet your metrics, that would be just silly in 2009. I wish the new and alternative media well as they provide options for readers, but no one should want the established newspaper to fail.
Best,
Joel
LaRocca sees himself as the only consistent and credible critic of the ETN. He is a legend in his own mind with thoughts like that.
Anyone who reads the ETN becomes, in effect, a critic of some sort. Some like it, some don’t. Some are vocal; some silent.
But Joe crafted 2 separate blogs against the ETN since he could not figure out how to be filled with hate, in only one blog. Imagine if Cuneo, or whoever runs the shoiw there now, REFUSED comments.
LaRocca did just that and refused, or edited, and at times would admit a comment provided it supported his outlandish narcissism. People learne to just ignore BOTH his blogs, all his comments, any letter he purportedly writes. His credibility on a scale of 1 to 10 is minus 50.
Joe has failed to factor numerous truisms.
No matter how awful something is, everybody gets something RIGHT sometimes, even by the law of averages (like flipping a quarter until you get head or tail).
Not so with Joe.
ETN has suspicious motives, ill conceived thought processes, a strong desire to ruin their community (and of course, theit furture income, hiring fiascos, grammatical errors (of which Joe LaRocca, and ONLY Joe LaRocca remains the final arbiter of grammatical correctness, despite Webster, changing mores, or plain ole Joe gets it wrong by the law of averages too.
Joel was correct.
Cheeseman was silent. I thought she wanted to observe the deadwood and then chop heads, but it was a long wait. But for crying out loud, for all we know she could be nursing a child or tending a sick parent and consumed with multiple tasks. The fact that a change was made from abysmal predecessors was a key move, and Cheeseman has yet to cause a fumble on her team.
LaRocca disagrees with Ed Mead Matthews everytime “we” speaks on anything.
If Ed said that it is winter in January, Joe would drag out the Sydney Times of Australia (in the SOUTHERN hemisphere) to portray Ed Mead Matthews “we” as a buffoon. Joe has a lock on that category all to himself.
Pat Howard has written with a number 2 pencil (I think) stuck in his ear for decades. He loves to blast Millcreek and the City of Erie is wonderful compared to “La La Land”
Note to Pat: do not make fun of a sizeable portion of your reading audience; leave the “LA La” for in your shower when you sing to yourself).
But damn, this guy is faithful to his wife Trish, and I bow my hat to him for pulling that off in changing times, and the pressures of his occupation. In effect, even Pat Howard manages to get SOMETHING right. AND, it involves something called CHARACTER. We like that in Erie, PA.
Cheeseman is changing GoErie (albeit, in some form of “turtle race” fashion, leaping into this century once it uprights it’s shell and resumers feet action).
Obits are gone.
They went to Legacy (accessible online and making GoErie even less needed). And why should a poor dead soul family us “click here” to see if there are some more dead people today. (It is bad enough we die alphabetical).
Fix that, and print all who died.
In fact, UPDATE deaths as they occur all day…..it IS news. Tell those funeral folks to earn their fat paychecks and send the information in to ETN to please their customers, not their employer who will pocket thousands, for looking “bereaved” anyway.
The Topix needs 24/7 moderation and all new standards. It is an embarrassment to this community.
We no longer need to see Pat and Lenore’s face on the slide of 5 whole pictures every Sunday and Thursday. They are employees; not news. I rather look at Cheeseman’s mug.
Put in a spot for your readers at GoErie to tell you what they like, what they want to read/see, and ways to improve. Connect with these folks. If one is signed Joe LaRocca, just delete it. it is hate mail anyway.
My theory is that everyone is trying their hardest to do their best on 12th and Sass, (and most are saddled with other people’s work on top of that. I am tired of hearing that ETN and GOErie get EVERYTHING wrong. That is not true. They do get things right.
But like MotiveGroiunds.com pointed out with one headline declaring Erie had a 50 degree temperature, there is no face palm large enough to cover that boo boo report.
Challenge the news you write; even the headlines or Jay Leno gets an inordinate amount of Erie on national TV.
Yahoo will say “Giselle plays Housewife”.
THAT is NOT news. Giselle married some creep and IS a housewife, not playing one.
By printing “Playing Housewife” (and I do not accuse ETN here), our younger readers believe this is notmal behavior and you get married to “play housewife”, instead of BE housewife.
Hell, even Pat Howard got tyhat right with Trish decades ago.
The local reports on Lenten Series are despearately needed in this season, and the Christmas stories each day made the season special. All of that is lost because of one numbskull decision. We need to touch our collective souls, by writing how we affect one another in this town, as no other community does.
Holiday newspapers are largely advertisements.
Offer the edition as a gift to your readers. No charge.
It is an inexpensive “Thank You”.
Offer one week free newspaper for each year you are a “paid subscriber”. Someone who pays 52 YEARS should get a free year.
When folks are old after years of paying, the paper comes free, because you put some of their prior years payments away to collect interest. Be creative with subscriptions. Half will have left town or be dead on Legacy (click here to find if you died).
LaRocca would have credibility in a blog if he A) picked one instead of multiple blogs, and 2)gave a realistic assessment of what the ETN does right, when they do so. LaRocca cannot do this.
I think he was jilted on a date with a staff reporter long ago and is harboring a grudge (shame on you Liz Allen, but I could not take a night of Joe either) .
Just date another one Joe. They come and go and bunches of them seem to be a grand night out with excellent conversation. And if you behave, they won’t tell their friends about the time they had last night. Win-Win.
PS. I thought Cody Switzer was a dud at first, but he is maturing in his work very well over time.
Ms. Cheeseman, use multiplle forums to connect with the Tri-State audience (including THIS forum as it is media oriented) and ask folks the plusses and minuses (POLITELY FOLKS) of ETN and GoErie.
The community has a stake in your success
The Morning Call in Allentown uses January 1 edition each year to thank and print the name of every person who wrote a Letter-To-The Editor in the prior year, a TWO Page spread sometimes.
You could do that if Kevin would print any.
And knock off all the edits, except for swearing. An opinion is an opinion and it can vary from the editor.
Let’s have lunch someday. I bet you would have a great conversation on ways to fix things up. Keep it positive…..maybe bring Trish too. (At least Pat will listen to her that night on what we said, eh?).
LaRocca, I did not proofread this comment for grammatical. If you find any, ship them to Alaska, freeze my words, and thaw them when I am dead, so you can hear them then.