Juan Antonio Giner has some admirably sarcastic answers…

To re-package the same news from the same sources?

To attend the same boring press conferences?

To publish today the same news that our readers knew YESTERDAY?

To produce pages and pages of commodity information with no value added?

To edit pages and pages of listings that could go directly to our web site?

To attend long and badly planned news meetings?

To expend hours and hours in front of our computers?

To work with not real feed-back from your editors?

To work with no time to think?

The real challenge in our industry is not how many people do we need, but to know how to change the rules and traditions of a newsroom management system that does not work anymore.

First fix the newsroom management system, and then let´s discuss how many people do we need. And then we will not have any problem to keep or find the best talent. Today´s problem is the opposite: newspapers are loosing or not attracting talented people because our newsrooms are not creative places to work, to discuss, and to dream.

I am not worried about the people that leave (many of them with great early retirement packages) but about the people that stay in our newsrooms to work under the same conditions.

Amen, brother.

Thanks to Roy Greenslade for the link.