Fewer days or fewer pages?

They cut down to six before I got here, can't give you a solid answer on that.

 

By "double-issue" I meant publish on Monday, but put both days on the masthead - in addition to weekend sports roundups on Monday, you focus on looking ahead to the week, issues at a Monday board meeting, etc.
An interesting question though, what percentage of stories in a paper are "must prints" and how much is stuff taken from the wires to fill out a section. If you think about news that won't be irrelevant in 24 hours, you can focus on issue analysis stories etc. instead of a typhoon in Bangledesh or a bus crash in Maine.

 

I'm in your camp. Cut the number of pages, but keep our subscribers who are still in the habit of getting our product. Once they get out of the day to day habit of feeling they need the paper, then, they're gone for good.

 

cricket

 

In the 1980s I worked for a couple papers that were arguably the best of their circulation size despite tight news holes. But they produced excellent daily products because they invested a lot of money in copy editors who tightened stories like crazy and content editors who constantly questioned why we were running such-and-such at all and, if it were worth running at all, what could be done to make it better. You can cut the hell out of space and still have a good product, but not if you're cutting the editing operation to the bone. Because editing that tightly has to be done with a scalpel instead of a butcher knife, and that takes time.

 

We've been a 6-day a week paper for years, but were faced with this dilemma recently. We ended up cutting pages. If we went to five days we would have lost a lot of credibility. There was also no guarantee that would could bring that sixth day back when/if the economy got better.

 

I'd rather cut pages. I would have no problem with cutting wire copy and going mostly local and making pro caps a sentence each or not using a wire feature.

Skipping a day just seems bad because you never know when big news will break and there is too much other daily news to miss.

 

That brings up another factor, is wire copy worth what you are paying for if you don't use it? We sometimes have a brief rail with 10-11 stories, maybe the local pro bball team and the rest is local (we always have a local front)...is that worth the money we pay for wire? I'm not saying I want to see it go, but it's easier to cut national/regional instead of local copy.

 

What about agate?

 

True, I thought about that after posting...but again, is it worth the $$? In this hyper-local BS that bosses are pushing...wouldn't it be a great cost cutter for smaller papers to go local agate only and drop AP? I'm just playing devil's advocate on this, I don't feel it is necessary.

 

i say go with fewer pages, but print every day. i think readers expect a paper EVERY day. a few years ago, we had major press problem and had to go to a nearby printing firm to get it done. but it came out very, very late to where a lot of folks were under the impression we had quit printing a paper. and they raised a major fuss. just think you need to keep up the daily print routine and cut down on the pages.