In my experience, it is because those positions were retooled for them. They’re not looking for writers and editors. They, as in the powers that be, are not looking for talent of any degree of separation from the skills that comprise a newspaper. They are looking for a wholly different sort of tenacity. They’re looking for people who will do anything in their power, at any cost, to keep their paper afloat. From where I’m standing, it looks like a lost cause.

The paradigm is changing so rapidly, some people fail to recognize it altogether, condemning themselves to obsolescence. I do not listen to radio, I do not watch television, and I haven’t read a newspaper outside of a bathroom since I was in my junior year of highschool. Of course, talk like that doesn’t even raise an eye-brow coming from my generation. We get everything off the internet. However, my relatively technically ignorant parents, both in their mid-fifties, are about the same. Five years ago, they would scold me for criticizing the Washington Post and their constant attempts to revitalize. They have, since, discontinued their subscription.

Papers are going to do one of two things, as near as I can tell. They’re going to pull themselves off the internet altogether, in a toothless protest of the inevitable. Or, they’re going to need to change every aspect of their business model. People don’t need to wait until tomorrow morning to get their news. Advertising has long been a fallacious enterprise in the paper, where the money doesn’t quite find its way back to the hand that invested it, and everyone stares slack-jawed, dumbfounded as to how their perfect system could have failed them.

The rampant availability of the internet is going to dilute the market. The same sort of money people made in the seventies is likely not going to be seen again. Why should we continue to pay, when so many justifications for the original cost have long since ceased to exist? If there is no cost for ink or paper and no cost to distribute, we are, instead, left with the daunting task of assigning fiscal worth to nearly writing alone.

Time was, someone like you, with a paper for the long-haul would get the bum’s rush on account of some marketing debacle just like this. A friend of my father’s was hustled off a certain DC-Metro newspaper in a flash. It was a couple decades ago, and I struggle to remember the details, but most of them weren’t available, anyway. There was no “he said she said”. There were unanswered letters to the editor and people grumbling fruitlessly in the editorial. A couple decades ago, people like me wouldn’t be able to read what had happened. Now, we can.

Most of us don’t even say anything to our friends. We just send them the link. It’s a culture of links and research, like the sprawling wikipedia. We get a link, we find the source, confirm the information and ingest accordingly. A bit soulless, but terribly efficient. And if it is without a soul, it is not without a heart. This will spread, and regardless of what happens next, the Courant will suffer for its decision, and the advertiser will suffer at another order of magnitude. The Courant will only feel the burn from its state, for the most part. However, Fleas-R-Us will get to shoulder the weight of bad press for some time to come, coast to coast, wherever the message finds itself.

I am not in any way, shape or form a professional of your field. Maybe my opinions are slanted or naive. I am not trying to tell you all about your own industry. It seems to me, though, that you were let go by a system that objected to you informing people of a service that delivers mattresses with parasitic insects in them. You are going to find that the rallying cry of “The Hartford Courant shall rise again” may be met with less than enthusiasm.

It seems that the purpose of today’s newspaper is to protect corporations. Corporate ownership supercedes public interest. While the Courant editors make noises about ethics and journalistic integrity, that is all less important than what Fox or their corporatate advertisers want.

The real question is: what will now serve as the voice for the people? Where do we go to get what we want to read and cannot get from corporate-owned sources? I’m really seriously worried about that. While I’m cancelling my subscription to the Courant, I don’t know how to replace it.

I can’t stand how our news media is no longer looking out for citizens and has just become another sleezy, parasitic industry looking for tax havens and corporate welfare.

Andrea Savastra is a great lady who has been in a terrible position — a job that someone has to fill — and handled it with grace, dedication and efficiency. I’ve had the pleasure of working with her on several projects, and even shedding a tear with her here and there over what’s become of our beloved newspaper. She doesn’t deserve your attacks.

Just a dumb ole Engineer…..