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I've had a bad week. But not like this:
I'd say he's marginally more insightful than your average news analysis columnist. A choice between the New York Times' Adam Nagourney and Shapiro at McPaper (what can I say, maligning is fun) is no choice at all. I wouldn't put him up there with Newsweek's Howard Fineman or Los Angeles Times' Ron Brownstein, but as I said -- marginally more insightful than the Dick Polmans and Dana Milbanks (shudder).
So what happened? Editor & Publisher hits on the most obvious reason -- the editors who gave him so much access to so much prime real estate -- nearly a thousand words (and sometimes more) every Wednesday and Friday -- left or were replaced. But there are at least two more that E&P were too polite to broach. Luckily, this sometimes-in-the-know blogger, is not.
The first other explanation, it's been suggested to me, is that Shapiro didn't do as much for USA Today (look Gannett, I'll defend your flagship up to a point, but I won't capitalize the whole thing) as they'd wanted. He's rarely on TV (the last I saw him was on C-SPAN in mid-2003) and it's even rarer when a Shapiro column is used as the basis for a cable talk segment. For what it's worth, in two years I haven't mentioned him once.
The other, I hear, is that the column has been particularly lucrative for at least one entity: Walter Shapiro. Gannett, USA Today's parent, isn't a charity. And Shapiro lost his benefactors.
Anyway, let us shed no tears for him. Shapiro is bound to get picked up by another outlet before long, so I can go back to reading and enjoying his words and never thinking to mention it to anyone.
I've had a bad week. But not like this:
This newspaper, in a decision that was not wildly cheered by all concerned, has decided to end this column and my affiliation with USA TODAY.So writes Walter Shapiro in "Hype & Glory," his long-running column for America's widest-circulated newspaper. If that doesn't sound bitter enough, check out Shapiro's you're-gonna-miss-me headline:
Ideas, not agendas, drove columnSubtle, huh? Actually, Shapiro's column was one of the better things in the sometimes unfairly maligned daily.
I'd say he's marginally more insightful than your average news analysis columnist. A choice between the New York Times' Adam Nagourney and Shapiro at McPaper (what can I say, maligning is fun) is no choice at all. I wouldn't put him up there with Newsweek's Howard Fineman or Los Angeles Times' Ron Brownstein, but as I said -- marginally more insightful than the Dick Polmans and Dana Milbanks (shudder).
So what happened? Editor & Publisher hits on the most obvious reason -- the editors who gave him so much access to so much prime real estate -- nearly a thousand words (and sometimes more) every Wednesday and Friday -- left or were replaced. But there are at least two more that E&P were too polite to broach. Luckily, this sometimes-in-the-know blogger, is not.
The first other explanation, it's been suggested to me, is that Shapiro didn't do as much for USA Today (look Gannett, I'll defend your flagship up to a point, but I won't capitalize the whole thing) as they'd wanted. He's rarely on TV (the last I saw him was on C-SPAN in mid-2003) and it's even rarer when a Shapiro column is used as the basis for a cable talk segment. For what it's worth, in two years I haven't mentioned him once.
The other, I hear, is that the column has been particularly lucrative for at least one entity: Walter Shapiro. Gannett, USA Today's parent, isn't a charity. And Shapiro lost his benefactors.
Anyway, let us shed no tears for him. Shapiro is bound to get picked up by another outlet before long, so I can go back to reading and enjoying his words and never thinking to mention it to anyone.
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