The Boston Globe just released 24 more employees today, including Pulitzer Prize winner Eileen McNamara. All 24 cuts came from the Newsroom, and the total carnage amounts to 6% of the newsroom staff.

During my time in the new media world, I’ve made several friends in the old media. I don’t have it in me to gloat over the newspaper industry’s death rattles. That said, new technologies come along and push old ones aside. Such is life in a free and vibrant economy. Pravda never had any such concerns. Major daily newspapers are either a dying industry if you’re a pessimist or a rapidly contracting one if you’re a cockeyed optimist. That’s just the way it is.

Additionally, our newspapers suffer from their transparently disingenuous pose of impartiality. Who wants to read a rag that pretends Adam Nagourney is an unbiased observer? What makes this pretense especially baffling is that naked partisanship makes for an easier sell and a stronger product. Who rules the cable airwaves? Fox. What kind of papers have bucked the trend? The New York Post. And even on the left, Keith Olberman draws stronger ratings than the creaking leftwing fossils that populate CNN. (Do fossils creak? Eh – leave me alone. It’s too early in the morning to craft coherent metaphors.)

The publications that survive will be the ones who find a niche. I’ll even provide a hint for any managing editors of major dailies who might be reading – cover local issues with the same eagerness that Al Gore has for an all-you-can-eat buffet.

One other thing - the fetishization of unbiased reporting is a historic anomaly. Ernie Pyle wasn’t unbiased. Neither was the New York Times for most of its existence. Unlike today. Giggle. Writing that unapologetically takes a stand has always been a lot more bracing than the day-old dishwater that currently drenches a modern daily. (Metaphors getting better!)

Meanwhile, from the bridge of the sinking ship, fresh from just having shifted the deckchairs once again, Globe managing editor Marty Baron pronounces, “When these job reductions are completed, the Globe will continue the ambitious journalism that brings so many readers to our newspaper and website every day."

Good to know.

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