Lupica is laid off

He gets it.

He gets it, too.

 

He definitely gets it.

 

Let's just imagine for a moment that all the great newspapers out there NEVER went through a single layoff, never saw any cuts in space or travel budget. They are still producing the same robust sections they were in the mid-90s.

Would you subscribe to the print edition? Would you read it regularly? Would you ever place a classified ad in one or look for something in the classifieds?

The answer (a resounding "NO!" by the way) is why it's a doomed business.

 

Who says that it has to be the same robust section? Why couldn't the local content be divided between the print and the web? Have some content be web only. Have some be print only. Have some be both. Total number of print pages gets cut down, but the total amount of local content remains the same.

 

Yes. Newspapers would still be doing well in your scenario. That is, if they also kept top-quality salespeople not the dregs of the sales profession newspapers employ now. And the caveat that the Internet websites DO NOT EXIST AT ALL. There's absolutely no reason to have a Website except to advertise the print edition, which still, after all these cuts, is still the only way newspapers make any money at all. If newspapers continued to control the information, and control the pro and college and high school beats in local communities and not give away scoops for free ... you are damn right they'd still be making money!
Before newspapers put all their "scoops" online and enjoyed their one minute scoops, they were THE source of information on all sports beats. Talk shows were helpless without newspapers and their columnists. Now ... lol. Newspapers are a joke. A total joke.

p.s. BT Express, you could possibly be another one of those people brainwashed to believe there's nothing special about the reporting in a good local newspaper. Like all the suits, you obvious believe the best of the best write ho hum trash. The reality is the product was special and good. Now of course it's of high school quality like all the other websites, but the product in the past? It was scholarly and special. The suits have long devalued their own staff's work, thinking citizen journalists would be just as good.

 

There are reasons to have the website, but the way newspapers went about having it was asinine at best.

Papers should have been using the website to enhance their print coverage, and eventually vice versa, instead of just repeating the exact same thing on both platforms.

 

But they CANNOT "control the information" in today's world. Sure, being at every practice maybe they notice the occasional backup receiver with a hip-pointer (scoop!) that nobody else would report. But ANYTHING of consequence will be reported by other websites (non-newspaper) as soon as possible, rending your print edition useless.

Can you imagine, say, a star NFL receiver getting injured in training camp and being lost for the season? All kinds of websites were reporting it soon after it happened (our newspaper website was only 7th in the Google search of said injury). Hell, the TEAM was reporting it. And you're going to make your readers wait 18 hours to read about it in your print edition? With information that may have changed significantly by the time you get a chance to update it 24 hours later? Laughable.

 

Of course, if newspapers had treated employees right, NO ONE with talent would have gone to websites that now break news.

 

I honestly believe newspapers best hope is to produce great content and go to a strict pay wall model. Nobody reads it for free but people who subscribe to the print product can obviously read it online as well.

If newspapers get back to their roots - being the leader in news, breaking stories, being first and best - people will pay a small price to read them.

The problem newspapers have is most of them suck and have let the clowns like bleacher report blur the lines so much that most people have no idea what they are reading and who is writing it any more.

That wouldn't solve the problem entirely, but it would go a long way towards reversing the death march the industry is currently on

 

I think the perspective here on this issue is a little skewed because most of us are current or former sports section personnel. Sports IS entertainment, the first E in ESPN, and it has been in newspapers since time was because people like sports and sports sold papers (Herald sales tripled the day after the Sox won the 2004 Series). But our department is the most vulnerable to competition from Internet sites like Bleacher Report or team and league Websites because it is entertainment, and readers aren't necessarily looking for journalism per se. Fact is, folks could do without us. But local and regional news is different. This is stuff folks need to know. They aren't going to trust Senator X's or the town government's Website to give them the straight dope and they shouldn't. That's where newspapers provide society a good that has yet to be developed elsewhere. Trouble is, without the dessert, sports, celebrity news, the puzzles, comics, etc., people aren't interested in getting their vegetables, too.

 

That's fine to have the report of the injured wide receiver on the web. But why not do the reporting on the receiver for the web, and some analysis on the offense and the feature on the second-string long snapper in the print edition?

 

No reason you can't.

But that doesn't satisfy Frederick's condition that for papers to thrive they had to do away with their web sites.