Being a good ways into reading Rupert Murdoch's biography, it's pretty clear that sniping between newspapers is a part of the business. Even though we don't have one competing newspaper cornering the daughter of another paper's owner for an exclusive interview, we've seen some pretty serious sniping between our Brandon newspapers in recent days.
On Saturday, the Sun made the following comments regarding the Journal as part of an editorial piece on local media and CKX:
"The latest edition is the thinnest we’ve seen, weighing in at just 16 pages. This is likely a result of the fact that the Journal appears to be rapidly shedding employees. The editorial staff is now down to just one person and the sales department is no longer even listed in the newspaper’s masthead."
They then go on to suggest that the Journal's relocating of it's office is "another sign of cost-cutting and shrinking business operations."
The Journal has fired back in today's paper. In an article titled "
Brandon Sun’s suggestion of Wheat City Journal’s demise is in poor taste and clearly misguided," they provide a different vision for the future of their paper, then follow it up by making a pretty strong statement about the Sun's perceived motives for writing the piece.
They then up the ante, adding:
"(The Sun's parent company) is expected to close the printing plant in Brandon next year and move all those jobs and benefits to Winnipeg. What the Sun needs to do is stop worrying about what other local media might or might not do and concentrate on being a better corporate citizen." (I should add that based on a past conversation with the Sun's Ewan Pow as well as a recent Sun editorial by the same person, my understanding is that the printing press rumour is false... but let's please not let this change into a general gossip on that rumour)
Without turning this into a general debate on which paper you think is better, what crosses your mind when you read this type of thing? Is it an expected part of the business? entertaining to read? The kind of thing you'd rather see left behind closed doors?