The Sacramento Bee, once one of America’s great newspapers, is moving in a direction that frightens its staff. Owner McClatchy is trying to tie journalists’ pay to the number of clicks their stories get. The paper’s news guild is urging the company to reconsider, writing a thoughtful letter to McClatchy’s new CEO. An excerpt:
“(Subscribers) complain to us when they see headlines about things like new menu items at Taco Bell and Chipotle (real recent examples from McClatchy sites). Yet that is the direction the company’s proposal would push us.”
