AJC ending weekday print editions

Newspapers crushed under the weight of their own monopolies in less than a generation.

But CueCat!

 

Of the big-city papers I occasionally look at when I'm on the road, none have fallen farther, faster than the AJC. The only one I can think of that comes close is the Kansas City Star.

 

I think the KC Star is one of the nation's best designed-in-India papers.

 

The fall of the Denver Post has been dramatic. The staffing gaps are apparent.

 

Pig Fucking Alden.

 

But I guess it is an example of getting what you pay for. I had been getting an e-subscription on Kindle for $6 a month. But I checked and a subscription through the website was $18 for two years. So I am locked in at .75 cents for the next two years.

 

The thing with most print newspapers is the quality is absolutely terrible and execs don’t really care.

 

This post is so true -- in three different ways, actually:

1. The quality of the content. Fewer reporters/editors means fewer well-researched and well-written stories.
2. The quality of the printing. They've shrunk the size of the pages as much as they can, and made the newsprint as thin as they can. Ink from photos bleeds onto adjacent pages, and the alignment of the color photos often is off. The thin newsprint curls up quickly at the corners of pages, similar to those awful faxes you had to unroll in the 1990s, making the paper difficult to read.
3. The quality of home delivery. Fewer drivers, longer routes, better alternatives for early morning and/or part-time employment. It all equals more missed papers or more papers that show up soaked, torn, or otherwise damaged on the driveway.

It's reflexive for us journalists to bitch and moan about our jobs ... but it could always be worse: You could be trying to sell the print product to subscribers or advertisers.

 

The labor shortage of delivery drivers is going to drive a lot of papers to digital only.

I wondered how much a delivery person in Colorado earns. The Greeley Tribune is paying $2.50 a subscriber per month. They are advertising that routes are from 150 to 400 homes and they want the paper delivered by 6 on A.M. weekdays and a route takes 2-4 hours.

If you assume a route takes two hours a day for 200 hundred homes that is $500 a month. That works out to eight bucks an hour less car expenses. And as spread out as the routes are today there is no way you are finishing in two hours in a Colorado blizzard. Pizza delivery is much more lucrative.

The lack of carriers means that the district managers are trying to throw the routes after dropping off their papers to the carriers. Which leads to late deliveries and further cancelations. Which means to less money for carriers and the downward spiral continues.

 

Or you can be delivered through the mail, which is a rising option

 

I know I am using one newspaper as an example. But if Greely is paying eight cents a day per paper. A first class stamp at Stamps.com is 47 cents. I don't know what the post office charges for newspaper delivery but I think it is much more than eight cents, so it is a big cost increase. I also think circulation will drop. Mail delivery basically turns the paper into an afternoon paper. Afternoon papers are already almost obsolete .

In particular, I think Gannett is close enough to the edge that any further declines in profitability will push a lot of its papers over the cliff.