Lee Enterprises Wants to Cut Post-Dispatch Newsroom

• now everyone who still reads the Post has commented

• Well I think it is easy to bash the Post but the truth is that it has a number of capable hard working journalists who are trying to make the best of a situation beyond their control.  And Kitty, I don't know what personal vendetta you have against Deb Peterson (perhaps she caught you doing something that doesn't play well in St. Louis?), but she provides an important view of St. Louis society, and even adheres to ethical standards, unlike some others.

• The Post Dispatch is the worst newspaper in the country and deserves to be gone. These people publish a lousy product, and simply blaming the state of the industry misses the true culprit - a terrible product. Jeff Gordon as your leader? Proves my point.

• Even though I only read the Post online, I subscribe to the print version also in order to do my little bit to keep our only St. Louis paper afloat. I wish something effective could be done. Any ideas?

• Actually not true. Post reporting has been super fair concerning the issues I've been involved with. Stuff gets in the Post that standard liberal papers won't touch.

• Kielman you are about as off topic commenting here as you are on stltoday. 

• Lee had a chance to dramatically change the course of failing St. Louis when they came in. Should have 'called out'  Civic Progress for 'missing' downtown revitalization by a galaxy, set a new course, and not have to let so many go, so often. But, Lee 'bought' the program, were told there wold be no changes, and  they put their publisher on..you guessed it..Civic Progress.

• The whole ballgame for Lee in St. Louis will be the day Bill McClellan says, I'm tired of doing this. When he goes, there will be a circulation falloff unseen since the last newspaper strike.

• I agree Uncle Foster. However, cutting the boring claptrap of Peterson and Pennington would be cost cutting measures that would help Lee Enterprises financially. Moreover, anyone wanting the very best of gossip should read Jerry Berger's "Berger's Bits" online. He puts Peterson to shame AND HE IS INTERESTING, something that cannot be said for Debbie. Plus, he has over 200,000 followers of his blog. Truth be known that about 195,000 more than those who read those pukey "Little Debbies."

• Now here,  Kitty! Gossip and claptrap are what the customers want! Freak crap that used to be the domain of the tabloids has gone mainstream. That's why gossip thrives while the Washington bureau gets cut. You've got to get with the times, girl. Or the Post.

• Ha! Good point.  Not to mention the paper sucks -- it's the most one sided paper in America.   Maybe if they were a little more balanced in their reporting, more people would buy it.  I'm not sure I'd even use it to line my bird's cage with.

• Lee Enterprises, the little piss ant newspaper publisher from the hoosier state of Iowa, bit off more than it could chew when it bought the Post Dispatch for a price they could ill afford. Newspaper circulation throughout the country has decreased dramatically over the past few years and Lee has taken a hard hit. If Lee is really serious about saving money, the first thing they should do is get rid of Debbie Peterson, the most boring and banal journalist in history. And follow that with another cost cutting measure by getting rid  of the equally non-important clap trap of Gail Pennington whose most important function is publishing celebrity birhdays.

• Sadly, the Post is in a death spiral. Every time their stock price drops the management cuts employees and content from the paper. This causes sales to go down, the stock drops again, and the cycle continues until the PD is a web-only rag with three employees. I worked in the circulation department of the Globe-Democrat until it folded, now I'm really glad I got out of that industry. 

• If you think this is bad news for the news room there, think of those of us in the industry that have been cut over the past couple of years. Welcome to the world of the long term unemployed. This is a sign of things still to come in our industry. An industry where upper management is clueless, and could care less.

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