I think Los Angeles Times editor Russ Stanton has misread his customer satisfaction surveys in a hilariously tragic way.
The Los Angeles Times plans to cut 250 positions, including 150 jobs in the print and online news departments, amid a continuing industrywide slump in ad sales, the paper's editor said Wednesday. ..."The number one reason that people cancel the L.A. Times is, they tell us, they don't have enough time to read the paper that we give them every day," Stanton said. "We're going to be more picky about the stories we choose to write long and a lot more picky about the ones we write shorter."
I can see the survey question in my head:
We're sorry to see you go! Please tell us the number one reason you are canceling your subscription to the Los Angeles Times: [check] Not enough time to read it.
And Stanton interprets that answers to mean that his readers think the paper is too long! Seems pretty obvious to me that what the ex-subscribers really mean is that they don't have time to read the Los Angeles Times because they're too busy surfing the internet.
