Talk about depressing...

So props to Danny Sanchez up in Orlando for giving us this great list of newspaper-related blogs.

But it's like a death watch. Especially here at Tribune Co.

One article is particularly scary.

It's tough to work when you're thinking about whether your company is going to pay its bills.

So it makes me wonder what's next? It's no secret the Sun-Sentinel is having layoffs, along with all our other Tribune papers. But what happens if we default on our loans? I'm no business lawyer, so it'd be nice to know what happens. Does that mean bankruptcy? Does it means we get the bankers to restructure the debt? What?

So could this only get worse?

Kind of weird situation....

So I get back from IRE all fired up. Especially after the Django boot camp, which gets a big thumbs up from me to all the people who worked so hard to put it on.

But at the same time, the Tribune stuff is no secret. Now I know how the French aristocracy must've felt when the Bastille was stormed. It's a little weird when you know there's an ax waiting to fall, you just don't know when or where.

That being said, I'm still excited about the future of journalism, thanks to great speeches by the legendary Phil Meyer and people like Aron Pilhofer.

Aron left us with what I think is the quote of the conference:

"You can't outsource the future."

So what did I like most? It'd have to be the Django boot camp. Maybe that's because I'm a sucker for anything hands-on.

First great revelation about Django (or Ruby on Rails) for me is this: It really forces you to think about relationships and good database design.

As a user of Caspio, a lot of times you want to take the easy way and just create a single table. Yes, I know you can use views and lookups and all that jazz, but it's kind of a pain in the tail for me.

A frameworks like Rails or Django forces you to think about not only what you want now, but what you might want in the future. That's a good thing.

Again, more to come.

What I'm reading today...

"Left-leaning" or "non-partisan"?

"Why would a Times article call the American Enterprise Institute "conservative-leaning," but not refer in the same article to the politics of the Mike Mansfield Foundation? Why do stories refer to the Brookings Institution variously as "centrist," "conservative" and "nonpartisan"?"

Who Will Tell Us?

"The steady drip of buyouts and layoffs has consumed an estimated four thousand newsroom jobs in print alone since the turn of the century, according to the much-chewed-over annual State of the News Media report released in March by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. As to whether the Web is replenishing this reportorial firepower, the authors are blunt: “In print, broadcast and elsewhere, more effort is moving to packaging and repurposing material….But less is being devoted to original newsgathering, especially the bearing witness and monitoring of basic news.”'

Cablevision Chief: Deal will 'bolster' Newsday

"In the News12 interview, James Dolan promised a "renewed invigoration of the newspaper here on Long Island." He said cable executives feel "that we can make this paper at least what it was before," referring to circulation declines experienced under Tribune."

Sulz style....

Well, according to the Politico's Ben Smith:

"The New York Times has figured out a way to bypass the massive journalist exodus from Iowa to New Hampshire, starting late Thursday. Two words: corporate jet.

Exhausted Times staffers will be transported, Sulzberger-style, out of Iowa starting around 6 a.m Friday morning."

Paging Mr. Zell. Are you listening? I could use a ride in a fat corporate jet.