Nobody likes a quitter

So, Dagbladet's first female editor in chief surprisingly quit her job today, effective immediately. The staff were shocked by the news, apparently. She has held the position since 2006, she was brought in to bring the paper's plummeting circulation figures to a halt and ideally, of course, to reverse them ... she has failed abysmally at this, in fact, under her control the numbers have dropped even lower, despite all the supposedly clever moves she has thought up to change the situation. Oh, watch my careface.

In one way this is an acceptable way to act, I mean, if you can't do the job you've been hired to do, I guess you can call it the right thing to do to just step down and let someone else take over. (Although I gotta wonder, in this case, who 'someone else' is supposed to be. But that's not my problem, fortunately.) At the same time it does seem like the coward's way out. Especially since the solution to the problems they're having is so obvious ... !

Namely, stop printing crap!!! Before Aasheim took over, Dagbladet was a pretty shitty paper. Now, after 3+ years of her management, it's total shit. And the solution is as plain as the nose on her face. How has she missed it? She's supposed to be so smart, but she seems pretty dumb to me. And it's also rather offensive in a way, because they're obviously totally ignoring their readers ... and also newspaper readers in general in this country. Because, OK, most newspapers are more or less struggling in this country today. Just like in the rest of the Western world. It's the internet, the media saturation, you know the drill. But some papers are doing well, and which papers are they? Well, guess what, it's the ones that are focusing on real issues, important issues, and who are going in depth on the matters that they cover. Dagbladet's own readers are even telling them this flat out. Admittedly my information, or whatever, is based on their online edition ... I hardly ever read the paper edition, I don't want to pay money for that rag of theirs. But it's so interesting that on every quality in-depth article they run on real issues, they get comments from the readers saying This is great!, More of this!, This is what I want to read!, etc, etc. Yet they continue to spend so much time & space on self-help, celebrity gossip, consumer affairs (blech), and various other non-issues that don't actually matter to anyone at all. And then they whine and complain about their shitty circulation figures and pretend they have no idea why this is happening. Gag me with a spoon.

Good riddance, Aasheim!! You won't be missed. Now let's see if the next editor can make the paper even worse. I'm not taking that bet. ;-)

On a total tangent, I so like Shahzad Rana. He is so smart and cool and just overall such a great guy. What this country needs is more immigrants like him. :-)