Austin American-Statesman is hot property (the real estate, that is)
An Austin American-Statesman staffer posted this on Facebook Tuesday:
I’m very sad for the newsroom tonight. We’ve been battered and bruised. I remember in 1981, when we said that everything would be better in the new building. And now we’re entertaining offers of selling it. I really am about to cry. I love the paper, but this upheaval is too much. Hugs to my colleagues.
The Statesman reported this morning that its owner is considering “several” unsolicited offers for its prime 18.9-acre lakefront property. The company says in a statement that “no decision has been made at this time,” and that “Cox Media Group remains committed to the Statesman, the Austin community and our employees and has no plans to sell the newspaper.”
Statesman publisher Jane Williams tells her paper that if Cox were to accept an offer, “we would look to relocate the Statesman” elsewhere in Austin because “we’re an Austin newspaper, so I would think Austin would be where we would be relocated, not Buda or Dripping Springs.”
A reminder to publisher Williams: Cox didn’t have any problem moving the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to the suburbs when it abandoned its downtown newsroom.
ALSO: A Statesman employee posted on Facebook: “Yesterday, we got the timeline for the consolidated copy desk, which means that our copy desk is disappearing Oct. 1 and moving to Dayton and Palm Beach.”
* Austin American-Statesman weighs offer for property
* Statesman political reporter quits to become House Speaker’s press secretary
It occurs to me that copy desk consolidation inevitably results in grave damage to the paper whose desk is being “consolidated” out of town to a distant place where the few remaining copy editors are harried to the point of distraction and, to top it off, know and care nothing about the remote municipalities they’re editing for.
However, in terms of what best serves the malevolent corporation, the move makes good sense. The embarrassments that ensue from such slashing will be spread out in grey type over linear time, only by stages degrading the product for a reading public so harassed, beleaguered, befuddled and narcissistically engulfed by the world of small screens that they won’t much notice.
In other words, the broad general readership is going rapidly to hell, and newspapers can safely steer their once proud product along the same track, knowing that the customer is well ahead.
Sure, the newspaper industry is suffering, but is it possible that Cox — a privately owned company that could actually be in a position to be a little more forward-thinking — is proving to be one of the most short-sighted in the biz? What’s happening in Austin has happened in Palm Beach, Atlanta, just about anywhere they have a media property. There’s simply no pride or integrity there.
Cox gave the downtown building in Atlanta away to the city, probably for a tax write off. Jim, you should look into the AJC’s circulation numbers. They’re not even on any of the ABC charts. AJC used to be close to the top ten. Have their numbers fallen off the cliff or do they not report them any more?