Fox Sports cuts web writing staff

Were you smarter than Reagan when you were 10?

 

Without totally derailing this thread ... I agree with Frederick to an extent. Ad staff and newsroom personnel have always been like oil and water, but I understand they have a tough job. It's hard enough to call people and try to get information from them. The ad sales staff calls people and tries to get money from them.

That being said, in recent years a different type of person is selling ads at my shop. They not only don't read the print product, they actively poor-mouth it during sales calls (unfortunately, all the newsroom and ad people are in one big room at our shop). "Unlike our print edition, the average age of our website visitors is 43." "Our print circulation is xx,xxx ... but our web site gets x,xxx unique impressions!" Or they'll badger a client to take the print/online combo deal, when clearly all the client wants is a print ad.

Most of all, we cycle through ad people so quickly at my shop that the idea of having a personal relationship with the advertisers is long gone. No personal visits, no phone calls just to check in. That's the way of things in 2017, I guess, but I also see that as a big part of the problem.

 

Perhaps the pool of sales people are rational actors and most realize it's not a good opportunity. If there was some vein of gold to be mined, wouldn't somebody step in? Maybe the people who claim there are ads to be sold should be selling them.

 

Thank you. Your post PROVES Fredrick should be a fricking consultant. Your post backs Fredrick up 100 percent!!! Thank you. I know I am right on this issue of the death of newspapers. And by the way, the woman/man who owns the grocery stores and the auto dealerships doesn't give a darn about clicks and new impressions online. The customer WOULD HAVE kept purchasing ads in the fishrag but the suits, concerned over cost of newsprint, plotted out the demise of the fishrag years ago all for selfish reasons. "Hey, if I can reduce costs by cutting our orders for newsprint 75 percent and put out a horseshit 10 page newspaper I will be promoted! I will get raises! I will be rich!"

p.s. I'm not trying to save newspapers. I'm not trying to say I'll go sell the ads. It's too late. The newspaper companies that own the newspapers finally have a majority of "non newspaper people" running the show. It's way too late for the fishrag. It's all video now all the time. It's views and clicks and twitter. And its clickbait headlines and yes, fake news in some instances. And guess what? It's all UNPROFITABLE. The way to make money was with the ol fishrag. My only quest is to get the suits to take the next step. Be bold and KILL THE PRINT PRODUCT completely. You know you want to do it. Why? Cause delivery is the new newsprint issue. Delivery is a pain in the ass for the suits. Delivery costs a lot. So kill the print product completely. Show some guts and get the ball rolling on the total demise of newspapers so talented people can go after the newspapers with their own Websites. Once the printing press has stopped completely, it's an even playing field for independent websites. Nobody's going to care about the brand name, "Chicago Tribune" or Boston Globe when there's no print product backing it up. Get ready for the independent websites to kick the traditional newspaper websites' collective ass!
BTW Fredrick is right about this stuff. I just am. Just because the convention wisdom is "we must Tweet; we must get views; we must flood the site with videos; we must host our own talk shows (chats)" doesn't mean that conventional wisdom is even close to being right. The daily Chronicle is dead, so suits, please kill the Daily Chronicle and make it the Web Chronicle so I can laugh my ass off as the independent sites take over.

 

Newspaper circulation has been going down for roughly 25 years. Before the internet, before widespread high-speed internet access, and before Twitter.

The theory is that newspaper executives purposely let circulation decline because the cost of newsprint was too high? Sure.

 

It's really odd to me how the news industry whiffed so badly. It isn't like Tribune, Time-Warner and Gannett couldn't have pretty easily entered into the Internet/cable industry with their existing mix of TV and print.

 

The people in charge of newspapers surely could have handled the transition better and had more forethought. But everything was going to go digital eventually. Not just news, everything. Books, newspapers, white and yellowpages, restaurant menus, receipts, on and on. It had to go digital eventually. But it could have been less painful.

 

It all had a cumulative effect, but it's true. The suits have been out to make millions in this business for years and they finally figured out a way to do it when the consultants, who frankly had no clue (consultants also saw an easy mark to further their bank accounts) talked the suits into going online and making it free. It always was a nonsequitir giving the content away online while charging for the print product. It made no sense and made advertisers be concerned as well.
This cost of newsprint thing, however, was a big issue and the higher ups who cut the order for newsprint by 3/4 quickly were rewarded for their efforts. That problem was solved as newspapers today are 1/4 as big as they used to be and newsprint costs are minimal to nothing.
Now it's circulation costs that remain HUGE. And putting that newspaper at the end of the driveway (no porch delivery; we aren't going to make it easy on our customers) costs A LOT. The revolving door of clueless ad people now ... advertisers laugh at them when they try to sell them ads. No personal relationships with the salespeople like years ago. Newspapers have made it so easy on customers to abandon the ol fishrag. And all these important things to the editors now: eyes on videos and chats (everything besides traditional excellent news and sports stories which now mean nothing) bring in zero revenue (OK, 'limited' revenue). But it's all part of the game. We HAVE to stress videos and newspaper podcasts and video talk shows because they will help us in theory kill the print product and we just HAVE TO ELIMINATE that ol problem of delivery. Delivery costs suck. And while you are at it, sell that old historic building of yours downtown, Chicago Tribune and all big city papers. You can make some $$$ on that land to give to the CEOs and maybe you'll get promoted.
Tell me Fredrick is wrong; just tell me cause you'd be wrong.

 

What's interesting is by creating this digital world, we (everybody) have created a scenario for the end of the world. Remember how the year 2000 was when all the computers were going to crash and chaos would ensue? That was the false alarm. Now it's hackers who will end the world. They will end your life financially when they get into your financial records and drain your bank accounts. They will end the world when they hack government institutions (more and more). They will end the world when they find devious ways to launch missile attacks. They will find ways to drain economies of their funds. Hackers, folks, are sneaking their way into the landscape and their influence is going to be terrible on you and me. Everything is going to be digital, yes sir. And that means big big trouble for the world. HACKERS must be addressed now before it's too late IMO.

 

Feldman to SI:

 

LOLOLOLOLOLLLLLLL

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">BREAKING: Jamie Horowitz, President of National Networks for FOX Sports, will be leaving FOX Sports effective immediately.</p>&mdash; John Ourand (@Ourand_SBJ) <a href="">July 3, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

(Also if anyone can clean up the HTML there I'd appreciate it #Luddite)