Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Is It the Economy or the (Mis-)Management?

Hampton Roads Magazine, in an examination of Roanoke Times owner Landmark Corporation's recent failures as a news corporation says this:

"In recent history, though, it seems that the voices that made Landmark different—the voices that understood that the short term was meaningless because company survival depended on unique long-term thinking—were being replaced with voices that just saw the short-term bottom line. Part of this was necessitated by their desire to sell the company, and in the recent market, selling a company has depended on making the company attractive in the short term."

Exactly. EX-ACT-LY.

Landmark, of course, owns The Roanoke Times, which has had a time of it lately, ditching many of its best, most experienced reporters. The newsroom joke for months has been that the top brass is "trying to make this the best 42,000 circulation newspaper in Virginia." The Times' circulation has been near 100,000.

If anybody asks, it's about the management, not the economy. Well-managed organizations thrive during difficult times because they have a plan.

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