A public meeting “Crisis in Midlands Journalism” is being held on Thursday, December 8, from 6.30pm-9.30pm, Committee Rooms, Birmingham Council House, Victoria Square
Discussing the horse that bolted a few years back, presumably. Not meaning to be unpleasant about it, but it’s not as if the writing hasn’t been on the wall for long enough. Waiting for another 50 jobs to go before the ‘crisis’ is addressed doesn’t quite seem adequate.
Via both Roy Greenslade and the NUJ.
UPDATE
There’s a Hacks/Hackers Birmingham meet-up the following Thursday (15 Dec). It’s a regular event bringing together journalists, developers and others who are looking for new/better/different ways to find and tell stories.
As has been noted another 50 jobs are gone and the answers and strategy were sparse at the meeting It seemed to consist of everything that had been tried before, before and before, except for one thing….. going into every workplace instilling in their members the required backbone and organising them to come out on mass strike
but of course the leaders can’t, for they are incapable of breaking the unjust labour laws by believing in mass action, and can only pin their hopes on just enough discontent to have the Labour party re-elected to bullshit and walk all over their members again
I was under the impression that the problems faced by the traditional media were structural (with consumers shifting to less lucrative forms of news consumption and the Internet chewing up classified/dating/property advertising) and cyclical (with advertising revenues being lower at the moment). If that’s the problem, I’m not sure what striking would achieve. Would the idea be to force the higher-ups into doing something more productive than just managing decline? If so, what are the chances that they’d be forced to just throw the towel in instead?