When LEO Editor Stephen George proposed the idea of summing up what’s happened to the local paper this year in a media column, I worried that there might not be enough information to fill a column. Then I started looking back over our reports here at The ‘Ville Voice, and realized I’d need more space to fit it all in.

What’s left is an item-by-item column chronicling the belt-tightening cutbacks and attempts to stay relevant by the C-J in 2008, from the launch of a revamped website to the elimination of the public editor and media critic, with lots more in between.

It all adds up to something scary — a no-win business model, with a management philosophy of constantly searching for ways to cut costs. But it’s our only daily newspaper and it’s not going anywhere - it just won’t ever again be the paper it used to be.

Here’s the piece:

Let’s face it — almost no one is happy with the corporatization of media. When corporations underperform, and boy has the Gannett Co. done that, they go into cost-cutting mode. And when tradition and quality try to stand in the way of profit, profit always wins.

That means there’s been a lot more goings than comings at the Gannett-owned Courier-Journal. One of those departures, we learned on Monday, is Tom Dorsey, the oft-critiqued media “critic,” along with a copy editor and a decent-sized chunk of the circulation department.

The copy editor, Joey Harrison, is known as the man who killed Muhammad Ali, because his photo cutline June 4 identified Lonnie Ali as a widow. Ouch.

It’s been quite the summer of discontent at Sixth and Broadway, so here’s a review chronicling the decline of the local newspaper.

Click here to read the rest…