Not sure what's next, I would say a trip to the ABC store is in the immediate future, after that we'll see, thanks for all the Virginia Tech fans that have followed my coverage, I hope I can find an outlet that will run the last part of my Christian Darrisaw series— michaelniziolek (@michaelniziolek) April 12, 2021
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All the best.
That's a shame, he did a good job and I appreciated his work.
He also goes on to mention how they completely ignored everything that had been put in place by the Union he's a part of...which was weird. Not sure how they intend to get around that.
The layoffs at the Roanoke Times came less than 12 hours after they tweeted this:
I'm just going to hope that's bad timing, because the juxtaposition is not a good look at all.
is the link broken? because it's just taking me to their jobs page...nothing about a flawless exit
Not sure if you're joking or not, but that was their point of the tweet when it was tweeted I think. If you were let go, go out and find a new job instead of talking shit about your previous employer. It just so happens that they also were letting people go themselves so it is extremely distasteful.Nevermind I missed the original link too. I don't think the jobs link is much better though.Dammit Pete.
I wasn't joking. Based on the URL reading "roanoke.com/jobs/the-right..." appears to be taking you to an article about "the right..." (presumably, "the right way to [do something]"), like maybe how to leave a job "flawlessly" but then just redirects to "jobs.roanoke.com"
maybe I just don't understand twitter
Looks like they took the article down.
It was originally a link to an article that was titled 'The Right Time to Quit a Job: 10 Guidelines to a Flawless Exit', I believe.
interesting that they took it down. I suppose yesterday's twitter feud with Michael Niziolek prompted that?
No idea, but that would be a logical conclusion to make.
Ah I missed that earlier link. I don't know if this jobs link is much better though...
I hate to see that for Mike. He did a good job.
With all of the lay offs in the newspaper industry, I'm wondering if this is a total restructure for the paper. From what I gathered, it looks like the paper will not be spending much, if any time, covering the NRV. I can't imagine that events from Virginia Tech, including sports, won't be covered by the Times.
What a tough industry to try and make a career.
It wasn't just Mike, it looks like the RT just laid off a hefty chunk of people, if not pretty much everyone covering Virginia Tech as a whole.
It's getting bad out there. No local reporters covering things like county, city or town government meetings or dealings, no local reporters covering schools or sporting events.
Let's be honest. How many people buy the paper today? It is hard to cover expenses when year after year subscriptions drop.
I do, and hopefully always will. Call me old-fashioned, but I subscribe to my local paper (the Cape Cod Times), the Sunday Boston Globe (still one of the best Sunday sports sections, ever, also gives me access to the daily online version of the paper), and until now, the Roanoke Times online edition for their coverage of VT sports.
The RT just lost my subscription today.
Online news content. These reporters are some of the few doing long form or long term reporting on issues. Which is one reason I'm glad Joe doesn't allow content from behind paywalls.
This was kind of my thought as well. I subscribe to the WSJ for news news and get NPR Podcasts for free. For sports I subscribe to The Athletic, TKPC, MoonCrew Patreon, and SZD Patreon. Why would someone subscribe to the Roanoke Times when content elsewhere (The Athletic/WSJ) will always be better? The only reason I can think of is for local news, but there's only 180k people in the NRV (per google). That's a pretty limited consumer base.
Unfortunately it's really hard for local news to survive in an environment where advertising revenue goes to 0. In many cases, there's not enough subscribers to cover the operation. And many people that consume information online are against paying for coverage and/or think that their pageviews yield some sort of huge payday for the publisher (spoiler, they don't).
From what I can tell, RTD is going to syndicate a lot of its "local" coverage to their sister papers. Folks in Roanoke and the NRV are going to get less local/specific coverage. That's not ideal.
I've been saying it for a while now, but I think subscription revenue is the future. With TKP, I had to make a hard choice to pivot to paywall articles, and there's other tough choices to come. But at the end of the day, I've learned more people will pay for a good product if they're forced to, rather than given the choice.
Totally agree - but at the end of the day, the product has to fit the consumers' needs. Seems like RT wasn't doing that.
I don't get a paper, stream thru my phone on my commute, and don't watch the evening news. I am suddenly worried I am less informed than our last generation. When it comes down to it, I get my info thru social media and self-lookup. I wonder if something is going to come along to fill vacancy in our local media outlets.
This was my line of thinking. If local reporters are no longer employed do we all just get our local (sports or other) news from twitter? That's a scary proposition.
The sad thing is that the local news/journalists are often the line of defense against corruption. They investigated and reported one stuff that will just go by the wayside. Town hall meetings, local businesses, police, and just about anything else. It's why it was the 4th estate. It was another check in the checks and balances.
What replaces it? Not social media, that would have less than zero credibility if such a thing was possible.
We need local journalists and we need them even more as life gets more complex.
Today, I can follow journalists on social media. Once they are gone, it will just be a mob.
The other sad truth is that people can fuck up anything. There's no perfect system that self-absorbed assholes and fear can't ruin. The flip side of that is people who respect one another and are able to work together can do some pretty amazing things. It's no silver bullet but some form of community media could be an option for smaller markets able to come together and pull it off. Nobody's likely to get rich if it's done well though.
I can't speak for anyone else, but the reason I wouldn't subscribe to my hometown paper is simply because the quality of the writing has bottomed out (Bristol Herald Courier) compared to when I was a kid. I don't get a business strategy where you reduce coverage and the quality of your writing. That won't win back readers.
Granted I know nothing about the Bristol Herald Courier but counterpoint: This is a chicken and egg issue. Declines in subscribers has resulted in lower budgets for local papers which had to let go of more expensive/qualified writers and bring in cheaper, less talented/experienced writers. The quality is going down because subscriber numbers have been declining for a couple decades. And subscriber numbers will continue declining due to, as you cited, poor quality. Vicious cycle.
Interestingly, this is a similar argument folks have made regarding donating to the athletic program. Should we donate our money now so that the program has the resources to hire better talent or should we expect the program to hire better talent and provide a product that we're willing to pay for later?
It is the same pattern that indicates a restaurant is heading for the crapper.
The newspaper itself is not very good. Plus with people getting coverage online of things happening across the country instantly, these small outfits are going out of business.
Shame he did not get to finish the Darrisaw Piece. Best of luck to him
What is interesting is that the Roanoke Times is I believe owned by Warren Buffet unless Berkshire Hathaway decided to sell it.
Buffett already sold all of his newspaper holdings (just asked a friend over at the Richmond Times Dispatch about a minute ago)
Thanks I wasn't sure. I knew I was surprised when I saw that he bought the paper years ago.
Lee Enterprises bought out BH newspapers a few years ago
wonder if Joe might be interested in running the Darrisaw piece on TKPC?
DO IT
Joe pls
Side note: Is the article a property of the Roanoke Times, or is the article a property of Mike's, since, he wrote it?
I wouldn't think it would become theirs until published.
Unfortunately that is not accurate. I posted the work for hire doctrine down below, but essentially the law is any work prepared by an employee in the line of work is owned by the employer, unless there is a contract that states differently.
That's actually my concern with publishing something like that. I don't have the legal resources to know the answer.
If he was granted a promotional TKPC membership and he decided to post an original article on the board, TKP would be in the clear.
Sounds like something the Athletic and AB should be able to handle easily, already have one win against them.
It would depend on his work contract, but is most likely that anything he prepared working for the Roanoke Times is owned by the Roanoke Times.
Here's the work for hire doctrine, for anyone that wants to nerd out on copyright law:
https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf
Will the Roanoke Times try to fight him for his twitter followers too?
I mean this is great and all, but if I were him, I'd still be flooding the market with my resume.
They already fired him once... The loyalty to the brand is gone now.
Especially after he was pretty public about how they let him go. I wonder if this has to do with the Union stuff he mentioned in his original tweets.
Had this happen at my company last year in the April/May time frame, my wife got laid off and called back two weeks later, ended up taking the job but the brand loyalty was shattered, conversely same thing happened to my co worker and he didn't accept the offer to come back and left for another job
So if you were him, would you immediately start/continue looking for a job elsewhere? I don't think a workplace that goes "you're fired, jk lol please come back next week" is one where you can see a stable long term future for yourself.
Absolutely.
Perhaps there were enough people like me who called RT to cancel their online subscription because they fired the VT beat writer.
Will you resubscribe now?
Most likely, but I will monitor their content for a while before I do.