More than all that, though, it seems to me that PaperTiger's natural life was 1L year. It fit nicely during that time, serving as both an expressive outlet and a natural transition from life as a newspaper columnist to life as a law student. I very much appreciated everyone who took time to read and interact on topics ranging from law school to Michigan football to politics to the demise of newspapers in general and the Ann Arbor News in particular.
I've left a handful of posts up, either because they're frequently linked to (the Dearing interview) or simply because I liked them, but I've otherwise removed almost all of the PaperTiger content.
Why remove it? Mostly because there's a difference between being a newspaper columnist and being an attorney, a different tone, and PaperTiger represented the previous tone, not the one I'm going forward with.
Is it the end? Probably, but as this last year has taught us, it's hard to predict the future.
Posts
8 comments:
So long, PTNM. We'll miss you.
A very Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Best to you and yours. Time moves on.....
Sorry to see you go and hoping for the best.
I do wish you'd kept the blog posts up as I think it's sad to see so much of history disappear as our interests change or archives are no longer accessible.
I agree with putting the posts back. At my site, I sometimes end up searching for something from a couple of years ago, and having the archives is a benefit.
Don't worry about post counts, either high or low. One of the fallbacks of the shallow-minded is to say: "You have all the posts there!" Um, yeah, moron -- it's a blog.
That brings me to what could be my final point here. Newspapers are becoming obsolete for many reasons, but the repeated hiring of stupid people is a major cause that people refuse to discuss. (Stupid people = the ones who run around typing the comment cited above or "The design is bad! NO ONE will read that" about anything they refuse to take 5 seconds to read.)
Somewhere along the way, newspapers stopped hiring the best people and started hiring good fits. Then when they failed, the managers bent over backward to protect them.
Again, as this could be my last post here, I'll cite an example. When I started at The Oakland Press in 1999, the paper was flawed, but it had some strengths. The next year, newspapers went on a wave of hiring, and some of the better people jumped ship. A few of the weak links also moved on.
Many of the hires that followed at the OP were weak. At the same time, the newspaper's owner was looking to sell the chain, so the focus shifted from putting out a decent product to cutting costs. So these bad hires were defended. Then, all of a sudden, we were to believe the paper had NO MONEY! So we HAD to keep the bad hires and protect them because if they left or were fired, then NO ONE would be hired to replace them!
Fortunately I only had to endure a few months of that nonsense before I took a buyout. The circumstances were less than ideal and are described (perhaps vaguely, for several reasons) at my own site. Looking back, though, it was a good time to leave that sinking ship.
Jim- probably a good idea for the new career (editing/taking down most of the blog). Best of luck in your future.
Jim, A good move. Family, school and skiing should come first.
Skiing here has been so so up until last week. We have had very little snow.
Best wishes. we'll keep in touch.
Frank S.
Jim,
Always enjoyed checking your blog. I wondered what had happened, as I was unable to access the blog for some time.
Totally understandable that you would end this now. Go out on top, too many folks run these types of things into the ground.
Good luck with your career change. May it work out just as you had planned.
As an attorney, I am saddened to see that you have felt the need to limit and/or delete your artistic and otherwise informational content for the purpose of a career and paycheck in this profession. I'm not saying you are entirely wrong - I see the logic that led you to this conclusion - buy I believe it is unfortunate for your former readers and speaks to a larger problem with the legal profession.
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