I wrote recently about the plan among the major three dailies (somehow "major" just doesn't seem like the right word anymore) to share beat writers in the sports department. Well, the idea may be spreading to other departments. This just came across the Pulp's transom: "Hey, a heads up -- you ought to be looking at beat sharing agreements between the three papers. We're hearing that something is supposed to come out in the next week or so."
This is bad not only for local journalists -- more sharing means fewer jobs, of course -- but also for the newspapers themselves. They're already sharing content, which I think is a huge mistake and amounts to beat sharing. Here's an apropos note sent to me by former Sun-Sentinel copyeditor Allen Cone, who was laid off due to staff cuts:
On Saturday, the Sun-Sentinel ran a story written by the Post's Jane Musgrave about fake driver's licenses sold via DMV workers in Del Ray Beach. The story ran on the top of local cover in the Palm edition.On Monday, the Post ran the same story on 1A.I think what happened is that the story appeared on the Post's Web site Friday even though it wasn't to run until Monday. I know the Sun-Sentinel lately is putting some of its weekend copy on the site on Friday.
