Advance Publications Beg-a-thon

Exactly. The newspaper industry screwed up 20 years ago in giving away the product. But it can't just give up. Time to educate people that news doesn't appear on its own.

 

Bryan Curtis' recent article about Maven probably expresses the sentiment better than I can, but - On one hand, of course I don't want to see more reporters lose jobs, and I don't begrudge my friends asking for support who still work for Gatehouse - which seems like a kissin' cousin of Advance, from the description of the tactics in this thread.

On the other hand, these fucks are a lot of what's wrong with journalism nowadays - acquire a paper, strip down to its barest parts, and then cut a little deeper than that, too. Like for a lot of these markets, I'm not sure if it would ultimately be better if the papers survive, or, if the existing product is abandoned and someone just starts fresh X months or years later.

 

Because, in this case at least, you're essentially asking for a *donation* to a corporation owned by one of the richest families in the world in order to support a content farm.

 

About 10 years ago Advance tripled down on the Internet, killed off the Ann Arbor News among other moves, all the while smugly proclaiming “we got this” while failing to upgrade POS sites that still take forever to load. In 2020.

 

al.com is now asking for website subscriptions of $10 a month, voluntary for now

AL.com: Digital Subscriptions

 

Exactly. Just did a $700M cash deal to acquire Ironman Group during the same week they were busting the union in Cleveland. As I outlined earlier what happened to their "No Layoff" policy? Playing the shell game with their employees and "Media Groups". A bunch of frauds and they get what they deserve - which isn't my $10 a month. Plus most of their content is garbage and culled from other outlets.

If you want to know the playbook, may I suggest "Hell or High Water" by Rebecca Theim? She outlines what they did to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Which is basically what they are doing to all of their properties.

 

Another week, another plea for subscribers - this time with the content honcho's photo. I wonder why Advance is so reluctant to put up a pay wall as all the Gannett dailies in NJ have done.
Our journalism needs your support more than ever. Please subscribe to NJ.com.

 

Our small daily made some moves this week, including putting up one of these donation pleas:
• We went from five days a week to three (we were seven days a week as recently as two or three years ago)
• Tripled our print edition price from 50 cents during the week and $1.50 on Sunday, to $1.50 across the board (mostly so our main circulation person doesn't have to constantly change the racks, was what I was told)
• Introduced several subscription tiers to help retain the inevitable cancellations
• And started a plan to switch our web site to a different platform that will help us turn more toward a subscription-based model, which means more of an emphasis on web content on the days we don't publish.

Of course, all of these moves have brought out the assholes in the community who want to see us fail. I'm a live and let live person, but I might dance a jig if some of them caught the virus and had their house burn down.

One thing I think it's safe to say will come out of all of this, is that it will stomp the accelerator on the death of the print edition at most papers. It's mostly been kept alive as a cash cow to generate ad revenue. If that slows to the point where it's not worth it, why bother? If we had 20 years before print editions mostly went away, that might have been cut at least in half.

 

I guess nj.com/Star Ledger should have started its beg-a-thon sooner. The other shoe just dropped.
Temporary pay cuts and furloughs announced at NJ Advance Media, but no layoffs as coronavirus hits revenues

 

Cause they've made it clear they don't want our work if they have to pay for it. So it's sort of begging.

 

That's true. I would think if the advertisers are speaking, or have spoken, and they don't want ads of any kind any more, newspapers will start shutting down the print edition relatively soon. Probably by July 1.

 

Once again, we need "Agree 100 percent" as an option for posts, rather than "like."

Not to be one of your asshole readers, but get ready for this: "Tripling the price for the two weekday print editions? I'm guessing there won't be 3x the amount of news."

Back in the 2000s, my shop in the Midwest raised the single-copy price (I think from 50 to 75 cents) and had a shit-ton of phone calls, letters, etc. complaining about it. Our managing editor told us about the backlash, then said, "If it was up to me, we'd charge $10 per single copy, just to make everyone get a subscription." He wasn't wrong. The return from single-copy sales can't be worth the huge cost (and pain in the ass) it is to make them available.