Wichita Eagle bails on Saturday print

The McClatchy paper in Durham, N.C., cut the Saturday print edition one month and increased the per-copy price the next month.

 

That, by definition, is not awful. You are simply being charged more for the single copies you DO buy.

But raising the SUBSCRIPTION price --- while providing 14.7% fewer copies per week --- is bad.***

***Although the Friday and Sunday sections of these Saturday-less papers has been bulked up . . . a little.

 

Thank you for thorough post and suggestions.

Yes, we do rush to get those gamer stories that staff covers in print -- the older clientele that subscribe and don't look online certainly have made it clear they don't like having to wait a day for anything, which we already do for roundups and stringer stories that we can't get in. Better to give them something in Saturday paper rather than nothing. The expanded version (or AP-like update if you will) that we do after Friday night for web goes in Sunday print if the Saturday version was nothing but nuts-and-bults with no quotes or perspective.

We're a smaller, six-day daily -- we don't have a desk, haven't had one in a decade. Pagination hub workers are our copy editors (by job description anyway, not so much in reality). We're just happy to have any stringer budget at all and are constantly monitored and reminded to keep it down.

Eliminating football agate is a good idea for us time-wise. You're correct, most of that info gets in roundups.

 

You could also just do agate instead of round-ups. That way you get more "names" in the paper and every little Johnny and Jane will have happy grandparents.

I hear you on the stringer budget. I think that's why it's even more imperative to constantly reevaluate what you're producing and where the available resources are going, even if it pisses some older readers off.

 

Take it from a person who experienced this in Florida last winter: Old people won't (or can't) read anything smaller than normal 8-point type, even with their reading glasses.

They find it difficult to differentiate between the letters and numbers, or even worse, don't even realize there are words there. All I heard for four months was how hard it was to figure out the classifieds/crossword clues/TV listings/scoreboard pages.

I'm guessing The Villages paper must have a large-print edition.

 

On a side note, we deskers used to joke about what’s would happen if papers cut pro beat writers. We’d imagine the coaches/managers calling in the game.

“Hi, this is Joe Torre, calling in tonight’s game. Yankees 6, Red Sox 2. Derek Jeter had three hits and a double. Jason Giambi hit a home run. Jorge Posada played good defense and Alex Rodriguez worked really hard at third base.”

 

We did that, too. RING RING. This is Mike Piazza, coach Lasorda told me to call in the box score. We lost, 9-0, but we tried really hard.

 

"And can you guys please make sure that Giambi's name ends in an I, not a Y. The parent who typed up our roster got it wrong."

 

The Intelligencer and Courier Times (formerly Calkins, now owned by Gatehouse) dropped their Saturday print edition long, long ago. The high-school football stories are available on line late Friday night (there is a paywall of course) and appear in print on Sunday. There is still a Friday deadline, 10:30 or so; so it means writing a lot of stories in the car and sending them from there.

As to agate, it all goes in Sunday's paper, save for Saturday night games that run on Monday

 

McClatchy seems to be trying out six days a week at the smaller paper in a regional cluster. So if Wichita, which I would guess prints in Kansas City, is deemed a success then Kansas City will go to six days so the company can close the plant one day a week. And if Durham is a success Raleigh will quickly follow.

 

George Lucas on line 1. You left out Modesto.

 

I think this is not correct. What is deemed a success? Of course Wichita will be a success cause it saves money. There is absolutely nothing to gain circulation wise from this so yes it is already a success. So just take away Saturday now in KC and get the ball rolling. Papers need to suck it up and kill the print edition entirely.