Labor law protections diminishing

Increasing use of freelancers aids business more than workers

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When news came out Monday that the Tribune was laying off a score of its suburban TribLocal reporters and editors in favor of outsourcing the work to another company, it caught me unawares and left me disappointed, but it failed to shock me.

When truth is merely relative

Trib's Facts ‘obit’ highlights huge dilemma

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The eloquently written obituary admired a lifetime of achievement that ultimately was doomed to fail in a modern culture which appears to value the loudest, most insistent voices over mere details such as fact or truth.

The obituary published online Thursday was written by Chicago Tribune reporter Rex W. Huppke about the life and times of Facts, 360 B.C.-A.D. 2012.

The impetus for Huppke’s sad report was the claim by U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., that as many as 81 of his fellow members of the U.S. House are communists. That, Huppke writes, was the fatal blow to Facts.

Making local news relevant again

Amid all the talk of pay walls, the decline of newspapers, and what the industry needs to do to save itself, many seem to overlook the idea of media relevance. They may give the idea lip service in the greater discussion of rebuilding revenues, but it seems to me that such discussions miss the point.

Back after two busy weeks and a short break

Heading into the weekend, my head was ready to explode. I’d had two weeks of lots of Adobe software training — four daylong sessions each week, plus a fair amount of work from my various freelance jobs.

But freelance work tends to come in spurts and, generally, not according to an prearranged schedule. Consequently, I was operating on three, sometimes four hours of sleep a night for much of the past two weeks. Friday night was the first night I got eight hours in bed.

Crashes, consequences, providence and newspapers

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The headlights of the approaching vehicle were all wrong.

Frank and I were headed back to the dorm from a state park near Winona, Minn., when I first saw the headlights moving around the curve. But they were jumping up and down erratically, and then they began to spin.

Pew report notes key weaknesses

March 5 study highlights obstacles to change

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I have been dying for the time over the past week to sit down to write about the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism report about the newspaper industry’s search for a new business model. The report was released Monday and was the subject of a couple of excellent analyses by Poynter.org writers Rick Edmonds and Andrew Beaujon.

Pay wall avalanche gains steam

As expected, the avalanche of newspapers planning to launch pay walls grew substantially in the past week with announcements by the Los Angeles Times and Gannett that they would seek a fee from users of their websites. I believe readers in the Midwest and across the nation should expect to see more of the same for some time yet.

I’ll be curious to see how long the pay walls last.