The Houston Express-News San Antonio Chron?
Gawker, Nick Denton's flagship blog in New York, has passed along the rumor that the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News are going to combine into ONE newspaper.
This sounds ludicrous and we don't buy it, but we wouldn't be surprised if the two Hearst dailies decided to share more resources, content, etc.
But just for fun, here's what Gawker said:
We heard a downright bizarre unconfirmed rumor that Hearst's flailing newspaper division is considering merging the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News into one operation. Bizarre, we say, for two reasons:
1. San Antonio is 200 miles away from Houston.
2. San Antonio is 200 miles away from Houston.
According to our tipster: "In theory, each paper will still have a base of operations in each home city. There hasn't been an official announcement yet, but everybody knows and all the staff at least suspect it."
Hearst has already threatened to shut down the money-burning San Francisco Chronicle, and they cut 75 newsroom jobs in San Antonio just a week ago. And don't forget the imminent death of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer! So this rumor could certainly be true, as a new frontier in cost-cutting. Still: two failing papers combine to form... a larger failing paper. [Details or denials? Email us]
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5 comments:
Isn't this pretty much a "scoop" of olds?
The experiment of merging various pieces of the two newspapers has already gotten underway with the Austin bureau, and there has long been talk of merging some of the entertainment/life/travel sorts of things. The Chron uses SAEN writers to cover UT and A&M now. So this is already happening to major parts of the two newspapers.
Is it that big a leap to think they could share more editing resources than they do already?
Now, if they start to use columnists for both papers, that could get tricky. The SAEN seems less tolerant of plagiarists, so Rick Casey would have to watch his step, although he has been pretty careful since The Incident.
No, not a great leap at all. Probably inevitable.
there has long been talk of merging some of the entertainment/life/travel sorts of things.
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It's not just talk. This is already happening in those departments and will continue to happen even more.
Who cares- all newpapermen are flakes anyway !!!
i worry that all our news sources have been merged into a confusing mess of us vs. them. where can we find true objectivity in the media. is all observation ripe for editorialization and conjecture. does hearst and the australian dude own all the thoughts and distribution of those thoughts. can we not ultimately learn to think for ourselves? and with what information? the internet? please!!!
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