DFM bloodletting continues

Michelle Gardner, a longtime prep writer in San Bernardino County, also was laid off

 

At least three prep writers have been fired. How many are left for a circulation area of at least 7,000,000.

 

Don't know about the total number, but between the Press-Enterprise, Sun, and Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, there's apparently one full-time prep writer left to cover all of Riverside and San Bernardino counties (at a combined 27,000 square miles, larger than 10 states), plus part of L.A. county. At a guess, probably 400-500 high schools.

 

Corrected the spelling, thank you for flagging; I'd blame Siri but this one's on me.

 

Latest bloodshed, apparently, is in the photo departments. Not many details yet.

 

Long Beach Press-Telegram lost both of its sports writers, loss to their preps and Long Beach State community:

 

OC Register lost its only sports videographer. Did mainly preps but also contributed USC, Dodgers playoffs, and others:


And Riverside P-E lost its No. 2 preps writer (lost its No. 3 in the previous round of buyouts.)

 

From reading this thread and Eugene being sold to Gatehouse I really feel this week took a big step toward ending the print product. With all these reporters and photos let go, it seems like there's nothing left of the newspapers. Nothing. So maybe these papers are close to online only. Or ready for online only? If so, good luck. There's no difference in yours or my own website than a newspaper online only website. All will fail quickly, certainly withn the course of a half year. I mean no full time sportswriters in that Cali town for the first time since 1890? Cmon. The death of papers is here.

 

Frederick

I think the LANG papers are getting close to shutting down. The Orange County Register was recently sold for a little over 50 million to DFI. But DFI flipped some land parcels the Register owned for 38 million so net cost was 15 million. If DFI only had to pay 15 million for Orange County you know things are not going well for the industry.

My understanding of the economics of the industry are that suburban papers have been hit the hardest. Suburban papers never attracted the retail advertising the big metro wide papers did. They made handsome profits selling classifieds at lower prices than the metro wide. If you lived in Long Beach you knew you not get many people driving in from San Bernardino County to buy a nine year old Corolla. So the seller would save a couple bucks and advertise in the local paper. The local suburban paper would have a much lower cost structure and make a lot of money from those classifieds. But revenues are gone.

As far as these papers going digital I don't think LANG has a digital strategy. I could not find Orange County Register in the Kindle Store when I just checked.

So what is the strategy? The hedge fund guys will squeeze the last ounce of cash and then close the doors, sell the furniture and move on, otherwise known as a repeat of what happened at the Tampa Tribune.

 

Lancey, your take is right on the money, unfortunately.

Another issue ... wasn't there trouble distributing the OCR in the past? I seem to recall they dumped all their carriers/distribution people and hired some new company, and it ended up being a disaster.

Between the collapse of the classified advertising and never-ending difficulties in the circulation department, we may be seeing many print editions dying off in 2018.

 

OCR lost a critical lawsuit with the carriers over whether they were actual employees or vendors or freelancers. It was a $35 million verdict that started crippling the papers. Then, the Kushner-Spitz undynamic duo took over and had no idea how to get the papers distributed. They struck one deal with another paper -- unbelievably, THE L.A.FUCKINGTIMES -- to do the delivery and didn't pay them, resulting in a $3.5 million lawsuit.
Honestly, I lost track of how many lawsuits Kushner-Spitz were involved in as the head honchos of the OCR. Probably about a dozen.
And don't forget they created the new Los Angeles Register, with a 70-person staff and no plan for marketing or distribution. My friends in one of the targets areas -- Santa Monica -- never saw one and had no idea the paper existed. Oh, and about a month in, the 70 staffers were locked out of the Downtown L.A. building for non-payment.
"Riiiiing. Hello, Mr. Kushner, this is Stanford. We would like our diploma back."