Former NBC Chicago Staffer Wonders Why His Stories Were Killed
Former NBCChicago.com staffer Steve Rhodes has resigned after his managers spiked a pair of his stories on the WMAQ site.
The NBC O&Os of course overhauled their websites last year, playing up lifestyle content and attitude at the expense of hard news. Site traffic has gone up considerably.
Rhodes penned a long essay on “The Beachwood Reporter” offering his detailed take on why his stories were killed; he says his bosses bowed to pressure from the targets of his investigative work. One of the stories was about newly promoted Tribune chief Randy Michaels.
Rhodes writes:
Phone conversations with the NBCChicago.com managing editor and his boss followed that day and the following Monday (December 4 and 7) in which I was told that “someone from the Tribune sent an e-mail to New York” and “somebody in New York was contacted by somebody - you can read between the lines.”
There was not a “comfort level” in Chicago with what happened, I was told, but it happened at “the highest levels” of the company. And that “the highest levels of the company” made the decision “to remove” the Michaels post.
NBC Chicago says it did not bow to pressure in pulling the stories offline. It said in a statement:
“We continually review and monitor the content on our sites. The local team here in Chicago made an internal editorial call to remove the post. No outside factors contributed to this decision.”
newshound commented:
Bravo Steve Rhodes! The whores, bean counters and clueless news executives who have raped and pillaged what was once a noble profession make me sick to my stomach. Sadly, Steve's experience has become the norm - content aimed to the lowest common denominator, infotainment in the thinly veiled guise of news, physical attributes carrying more weight than journalistic credentials - I could go on but I'm getting nauseous. Unfortunately, the ratings tend to bear out the fact that celebrity gossip, lifestyle pieces and car chases are what score with viewers. Murrow, Cronkite et al are spinning...
chilli dog commented:
the real culprit in station prez wallace. He sucks up to everyone he can as he looks for a job.
He'll do whatever abernathy at fox tell his to do.
he listens to ed wilson at tribune.
Watch out for john - he will stab you in the back. I've watched.
T Dog commented:
One company has made a mess of network TV, thanks to Zucker. Another has made a mess of the newspaper business, thanks to idiots like Zell and Michaels. Congratulations, Big Media, you've done it again. The bozos at these two companies deserve one another.