NYT lays off newsroom workers as Yahoo hires

New York Times lets go 500 workers including 80 newsroom employees. Meanwhile, Yahoo hires a war correspondent.
Let’s hope the new models make up for the old and more. The New Orleans Times Picayune staff deserve a Pulitzer prize and a national medal for their local, detailed coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath. Our society needs good journalism in order to function.
By the way, I’d be pretty surprised if Yahoo turned out to a significant player in real journalism. Yahoo’s management comes from the heart of the LA entertainment industry. It seems more plausible that they want a war correspondent so he can take pictures of things going kaboom.
What we need as a society with respect to say, the Iraq war, includes information to answer questions like:
* is reconstruction making progress toward a stable and democratic society, or is Iraq headed toward breakup and civil war.
* how much money has the US spent in Iraq, and how much of that money has gone to its intended purposes
By “real journalism”, I mean nothing about the brand which is may well change along with disruptive technologies, and everything about the quality, breadth and accessibility of the information.

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