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Booo. Hissss. I'm a native, and lifelong booster of the S-S. They just gave me the last reason needed to stop reading my hometown paper. What's the point? A few City Hall stories here and there? They need a reporter in every city. Period. And they need to cultivate local arts writers. Period. The more they cut, the more they kill themselves. To succeed long term requires reinvestment in core product. That means more editorial, not less. Idiots.

Tribune will have one central copy editing system operating for all of its newspapers in a few weeks. Local copy desk staffs around the country will work on the same CCI system producing their own newspapers. Once that happens, all Tribune newspapers can share previously edited stories with photos and graphics already attached. The newsroom is rife with speculation about which coverage and sections will be produced by Tribune, with a local designer to fit the chain-wide copy around the ads. Travel? TV? Books? National and international news? Business? Whatever the plan is, the Sun-Sentinel is moving to a universal copy desk to handle the changed workflow.

Well, I'll agree the Sun has become a joke as a local paper, but I will disagree losing movie reviews means squat. I agreed with reviews about 20% of the time, finally just quit reading the stupid things. Movies are personal, no reviewer can tell you if you will like it or not.

It's fun watching the Sun go down, I'll tell you that. Notice (at least on the online version) how spelling, punctuation, grammar, and accuracy has left the business ? English as second language writers anyone ?

This is reallly horrible news. Phoebe's reviews and blog posts (it IS a blog, people -- they're supposed to be full of some level of rambling and semi-personal info. Otherwise, it's boring. Which is one thing Phoebe's blog never is...) were pretty much ALL I read in the Sentinel in the last two years. Which is a shame, considering I was a fairly rabid reader of both The Herald and The Sentinel (and to a lesser degree, New Times) for most of my adult life growing up in Florida (I'm in NY now, but try to keep up with the local papers).

She's a rarity when it comes to newspaper writing in general and movie reviews in particular: a fresh voice that is not only unafraid to have an opinion, but also shares her opinion with skill, panache and style. Phoebe's writing is unabashed, informed and charming, and without it, The Sentinel has gone from a paper with a slow pulse but some signs of life to being DOA on porches across Broward.

Comments are closed on Flower's blog. Hmmph. Ya know, she recently got first place honors from SPJ's Green Eyeshade awards for criticism. Shouldn't writers get a bonus for something like that, instead of losing his or her beat?

Putrid, putrid call.

You do not shut out your truly unique voices, especially when there is a dearth at the company to begin with.

And, yes, I need to have reviewers I can trust... I can't just be tossing $30-40 with my wife without some inkling I will enjoy the experience.

Pathetic.

Oozing with pus.

The Sun-Sentinel is turning into the Boca News!

The last remake of the Sunday edition has created a "newspaper lite." Looks like that was just the beginning.

Well, right now I get the NY Times delivered on Sunday -- I might as well subscribe for the whole week.

The S-S also is not replacing horse racing writer Dave Joseph, who left to work for the Bank Atlantic Center in Sunrise.

Maybe she can join the freakin' Help Team!

I'm cross-posting this on Roger Moore's blog: As someone lucky enough to make a living as a film critic, I'm upset by the dwindling number of jobs for my colleagues at regional papers. Critics like Phoebe Flowers, in addition to being fun to read, are people who live in the communities they write for. They have unique voices, they interact with local readers, and they cover and (presumably) encourage local exhibitors. The Trib decision is extremely short-sighted. It not only slights the writers, it slights the readers. The new Village Voice group has also nationalized film coverage--and as great as it is to read terrific and important critics like J. Hoberman, Scott Foundas, and Nathan Lee in papers all over the country, something precious has been lost. I don't know what anyone can DO about this... It's not like anyone at Newsday or anyone at the Chicago Trib has a say in where his or her reviews run. And I'm not naive enough to think that a bunch of critics co-signing a letter will have any effect. But maybe if enough of us register our alarm, something will get through...

Honest to God, I don't know when the insufferable and interminable whining by newsroom people across the nation will subside, but Phoebe's rants indicate it's probably not in the near term.
Lets face it: newspapers are under incredible fiscal seige and something must be done to preserve the core product. And I'm sorry, as nice as it is to have a local reviewer, it jus isn't part of the core.
What's happoening to news personnel is no different from what happened to steelworkers in the 70s and 80s, and autoworkers right now: Their lives and their jobs are changing. I'm not saying the changes are good, but they are unstoppable. Everytime I see a reporter or editor -- or movie reviewer--whining and pouting, I think of the scene when Marlon Brando in the Godfather slaps around the whining crooner-family friend played by Al Martino. "You can act like a man"--or in this case, a woman.

Spare me:"incredible fiscal seige" ? Yeah - not really.

Do you run a business? It's nice to be in the black, right?
A margin of 5 or 10% is pretty great, eh? Most papers are in the 20% OR MORE.

This garbage about newspapers being in trouble is self-fulfilling. Circulation would grow if you ADDED to the content, increased quality, HIRED MORE REPORTERS AND EDITORS. Like what a smart business does -- think long-term.

What's happening now is a harvest for the last drops of money by people who have no idea how to properly run a newspaper -- which is both an art and a service to the community.

Find folks who can live with profits of 10 percent, keep a paper rooted to zoning hearings, city budgets and the watchdog role of the Fourth Estate -- and it will thrive.

Look at the numbers of smaller community papers. They are doing great. It's the big papers run off of Wall Street performance with a failure of imagination of leveraging online access that are in trouble.

And with every cut of the news staff, they dig their own grave deeper.

The whining needs to get louder -- and all these folks need to learn how to move into management, find investors, and open up a chain of papers that actually does the job that journalism is supposed to be doing.

The money will be there. It might not be 20 to 40 %, but it won't be in the red.

Can't argue with Wilder from a wouldn't-it-be-nice point of view, but the fact of the matetr is that Wall Street investors simply won't adopt his woefully unrealistic -- but, again, philosophically correct -- view. So newspapers have to suck it up. Besides, this is about movie reviews--hardly something that's part of a newspaper's core mission.

Kevin - It appears then that the problem is misplaced expectations from Wall Street investors. Wrong business model for this kind of work.

(Interestingly enough, part of what got us here is the estate tax, which killed off more than a few family-operated newspapers. But I digress.)

Newspapers need to be protected from this kind of pressure. Keep 'em private or consider an ESOP. If Publix can pull it off...

Keep each paper small and targeted -- ideal for advertising -- but have them be part of a larger chain that shares resources (IT, purchasing, printing) and leverage size so there can be decent benefit packages, insurance, etc.

Hire a few in-house lawyers to save on billings. Get a pack of do-gooder graduates who are crazy for the First Amendment.

Regarding movie reviews, I think the key issue here is Flowers herself.

While film criticism ain't a top core mission, for a regional paper in a metro area like South Florida, it's warranted. We are not talking about a small rural outpost.

In this market, we should have quality non-fiction writing in our papers that compliments harder news stories. The film, television and advertising industry has relevance here. Pop culture happens here.

Here. Our backyard. Every damn day. We are ground zero for the odd and fashionable.

Flowers is a great writer. Award-winning. Respected by her peers (per her about-to-end role as chairwoman of the Florida Film Critics Circle).

What a kick in the teeth to our craft to remove her from what she excels at right after she is recognized for work.

What a middle-finger to the readers of South Florida! It's clear by this action that the Sun-Sentinel has no regard for quality.

Why not make her copy what is used for the wires? What's the answer to that reasonable consideration, if indeed this kind of trimming is needed.

Which, really, it isn't.

Don't buy the BS. Ask for the budgets. Look over the pro-formas. Let's layout the numbers, examine them as the watchdogs we should be.

I'm sure some of the readers of this blog may be in a position to send Bob Norman this kind of information.

Time to turn on the sunshine.

Movie reviews have actual been core content for papers for decades, and one of their most popular features. And Mr. Edelstein nails it when he talks about the interaction with local readers and unique points of view -- and he is one who could actually benefit from this trend of few critics and more wire.

Unfortunately a lot of the editors of our big and mid-sized city dailies don't seem to value quality criticism and the popularity of that content. So we have this strange phenomenon of papers cutting some of their best read content in order to survive. There isn't one critic who would argue against the need for city hall and cops reporters. But culture is also an important part of the package.

Gimme a break, Rich. Movie reviews might be part of core content BUT NOT LOCALLY WRITTEN REVIEWS.
I challenge you to tell me the difference between a locally generated and wire review to your reader.

Movie reviews are non-geographic. You don't need to be a local writer to write one.
Wouldn't Sentinel readers benefit by reading reviews from the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune, which have more seasoned critics? We want to know about about high property taxes, the school board actions, and how crime affects us in Broward. If Flowers ends up writing about these local issues, wouldn't that benefit the paper? (even though I will miss her spunky reviews.)

A newsroom friend tells me that the Herald's movie critic lives in New York.

What Kevin misses is that using canned wire reviews is giving the readers just another reason not to buy the product -- something that the industry is doing at an alarming rate. And in every reader poll done, movie reviews and entertainment coverage is always among the most read and most popular parts of the newspaper.

Here's another thing to think about: With RottenTomatoes.com and other movie web sites, readers can now easily get reviews from all over the country, including the wire reviews that will now be slapped into the paper. Why subscribe to my local paper for unique content when they are printing reviews I can go on-line and read for free?

With bone-headed decsions like killing off the local movie critics and other content, the industry is killing itself. My hope is that in a few years, industry leaders will smarten up.

Will Chauncey and Sean be next? I hope not. Just awful...

Big deal. So they get rid of Phoebe, and instead we get a wire critic's opinion. What's the difference? The wire critic can't possibly be any more wrongheaded than she is. (Flowers actually thinks Apocalypto is a good film. APOCALYPTO, ferchrissakes!!)

Also, the girl doesn't even know how to run a blog. Having no interest in anyone's opinion but her own, she closes the comments sections of her topics and doesn't allow any reader input.

I say send her off to cover the Iraq War.

Phoebe has a bad habit of offending readers of her blog, questioning their masculinity and calling them "stupid" for liking Everybody Loves Raymond. I will not miss seeing her name in the Sun-Sentinel.

Hi Bob,

This is the real Cinema Dave, not the twisted individual who uses my name in vain.

In late spring, this indivdual began using my name on Phoebe's blog. I saw entries that I did not write appear on her blog with my name. Phoebe and I became aware of this indivdual's sick game a few months ago.

Given the date of the fake Cinema Dave entry, it was the same date that I had to add a security function on my website.

I had receved some harsh attacks on my website. Then this sad indivdual started to attack my regular visitors. I posted some comments on my blog, but had to sheild this individual's deluded comments from my website.

If anyone cares, I have a link to my offical statement from my Cinema Dave blog with regards to the sad state of the Sun Sentinel newspaper;

http://cinemadave.livejournal.com/183562.html

Its my first time on your blog and I really like it. And also I am a great movie fan.