Omaha World-Herald Eliminates 43 Jobs, Threatened by the Rise of Smell Nebraska

Omaha NE (SN) – Another Nebraska journalism giant took to drastic measures last week as the Omaha World-Herald reluctantly announced the elimination of 43 of their positions, including the termination of 24 employees, and a reduction in the total number of published pages to their newspaper.

Phil Taylor, World-Herald president, recounted their rocky start to 2018. “The writing is on the wall, pun intended. With declining attention spans and literacy rates in Nebraska and most people just using emojis to express themselves, no one wants to read words anymore, let alone a complicated news article involving over 500 words and complete sentences. People can barely handle the 280 characters of Twitter.” Taylor acknowledged competition in the space is tougher than ever, especially with the rise of online media.  “Just like that, Smell Nebraska comes out of nowhere and unveils the secret identity of the OmahaNightLife.com photographer. How did we get scooped on that? We lost three major national advertisers on that day alone. Our sound journalistic methods just can’t compete with these fake news blogs anymore.”

Taylor stressed that coverage of the mighty Nebraska athletic program will not be affected. “We are keeping an extensive staff to cover potential Husker recruits that are merely juniors and seniors in high school, most of whom never end up attending Nebraska and even if they do make it to the state, barely see the field,” he told reporters.

The World-Herald president did inform us that the newsroom will stop covering daily crime, leaving any crime reporting solely to “MeanStreets OMA,” a Facebook page moderated by 50-year-old men living in basement apartments with police scanners. Taylor did mention the paper would be upgrading their mugshot section as that seems to be a strong source of revenue.

For some terminated employees, the lay-offs are a breath of fresh air. We sat down with [former] paperboy Elias Tucker.

“I’m super pumped. Between losing my dogshit paper route and the school walkouts related to gun reform, this is shaping up to be an excellent spring for some “me time.” I’m just glad I don’t have to wake up at 4:30 in the morning any more so I can make $14. Are you kidding me? I make more than that selling a single Adderall at school.” Elias said.

As of Monday morning the World-Herald’s web address “Omaha.com” is now an immediate redirect to a GoFundMe page created to hopefully raise enough money to keep the domain “Omaha.com” active for another year.

Smell Nebraska would like to add that among the combined 2018 lay-offs of the Omaha World Herald and the Lincoln Journal Star, Smell Nebraska has only lost one employee, me, Darren Keen. (Okay I promise it isn’t me. Maybe it is? Okay I’m joking. Dammit I have to stop doing this to myself. -Darren (Not Darren) )