Monday Memo

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We begin as we always do on the day after Ground Hog Day. The prediction from Punxsutawney Phil is: Six more weeks of winter.

Elsewhere, the Star-Ledger of New Jersey published its last print edition Sunday.

Here at home, as the Waterbury Republican-American transitions Wednesday to Hearst Connecticut Media ownership, the paper is losing one of its reporters to the Hartford Courant. Livi Stanford was with the Rep-Am for about two years.

Hearst is offering a new feature on its websites that allows users to listen to most stories. The player is located at the top of each story and essentially converts stories into mini-podcasts read by an automated voice.

NBC Connecticut reporter Jolie Sherman will soon be leaving the station. Weekend posts on social media indicate she has landed a job in her home market of Detroit. She will reveal details at a time and place of her choosing, but not today. Not today.

From the nation’s capital, there have been many stories in recent months about low morale at the Washington Post. Some staffers have even taken the step of writing to owner Jeff Bezos asking him to intervene with the Post’s leadership. As if. The troubles began to boil over after Bezos stepped in last year to prevent the Post from publishing an endorsement of Kamala Harris for president.

Since then several top staffers have left the paper. Some quietly and some not. Some for other legacy publications, but some have taken a different path toward the lean and mean independent journalism of platforms like Substack (Jen Rubin) and Puck(Leigh Ann Caldwell).

The Contrarian – Rubin

Puck Poaches Caldwell – Axios

These moves, when combined with cost cutting efforts at established news organizations like CNN, signal a further shift away from the dominance of a few large scale news organizations and toward a model that is based on the gritty, hand to hand combat style of daily reporting that values mini-scoops and inside information for a select audience over general coverage for the masses.

As part this trend, it is notable that when CNN anchor Jim Acosta announced his departure from the network last week, he did not show up the next day at MSNBC or NewsNation. Instead he announced his intention to begin a broadcast on Substack and in less than a week had almost 150,000 subscribers.

As this trend continues it means high quality reporting for niche audiences, but a decline in the quality of reporting accessible to the more casual news consumer. This in turn will have an impact on the news IQ of the average citizen/voter.

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