Anyone up for breaking a strike?

They share a business department, they share a sales department, etc.

 

Usually in a JOA, one paper gets screwed. The agency makes more of an effort to sell subscriptions to the dominant paper, and the owner of the No. 2 paper usually doesn't mind because it gets a set percentage of the overall profits no matter what the circulation is. But the paper eventually withers in PM-land to the point that it's not worth printing it. Which doesn't bother the owner of the now-dead No. 2 paper, because it continues to get its cut of the profits long after it has agreed to kill the paper. KR didn't treat the DN that way -- it tried to help it stay healthy. That's something you usually don't see in a JOA, a legit effort to help the smaller paper succeed. The Daily News' problem isn't that it was abused systematically. There is just less of a market now for tabloids pretty much everywhere because the downscale audience it's aimed at just isn't reading much of anything.

 

Not to threadjack here, but Frank, you've once again made a very interesting point. Especially as the conversation about broadsheets going tabloid (in form, if not necessarily in content) keeps getting louder.
I may sound like Dyepack here, but I've worked at tabloids and I've worked at broadsheets, and it seems like, at a tab, even at "respectable" tabs, the pressure to have a single dominant cover story or two, and to focus on design and visuals over words, leads inevitably to dumbing down the product in the name of boosting single-copy sales.
But as you said, that down-market audience isn't likely to read us anyways. So why dumb ourselves down for them? If we're not smart, the news-savvy readers will spend their 50 cents elsewhere, on, say, the Times or the big regional daily. And we're stuck with just dying-off-old-folks. Not a good business model.

 

Having worked a tabloid section for some two years now, I find it to be a "dumbing-down" process if, and only if, that's the mindset going in.

To the contrary, I've found the tabloid format to be superior for the packaging of single events, not to mention easier for the reader to follow.

As far as the design vs. words war goes, I'm not going to get into it. I simply know you need both, and one suffers without the other. EITHER one.

 

Wouldn't this play into the hands of tabs, though? The idea that tabs can be more interesting design-wise should be favored, especially since every report that comes out focuses on design, design, design.

 

At 112K, how could the News stand alone, with those contracts, in that city?

 

Agree. Content doesn't necessarily have to be dumbed-down just because a lot of tabs shoot for the lowest common denominator. And I also agree that a well-done tab can be more reader friendly.

 

Times Herald in Port Jervis/Middletown is one that hasn't dumbed down.

 

If you read more than sports and news, it is harder to navigate a tab. In a broadsheet, you can more easily find the business and entertainment sections.

 

In the audit numbers that came out in October or November, weren't the New York Post and the New York Daily News - two tabloids - two of only three or four newspapers to show circulation gains and not losses?
I think there's still a market for tabloids. In parts of the northeast train (and bus) ridership is up and tabloids are alot easier to read on a crowded train (or bus) than the broadsheets are. Not sure how mass transit ridership is in other parts of the country though.
Plus tabloids (like the NYDN and NYP) tend to focus on the sensational news or the celebrity news as opposed to the hard-core news the broadsheets focus on. In this age of American Idol, Survivor, and people clammoring for celebrity news, more people want to read about Brittney getting divorced from K-Fed than want to read about how the conflict in Iraq is getting worse.

 

That's a valid point. Plus, it's easier to split up. My wife and I read the Times simultaneously in the morning.

 

I explained this on another thread. The Daily News posted a tiny gain for the past six months, as it sometimes does, but overall it has lost 100K daily over the past dozen years. The Post has grown by cutting its cover price in half and by some estimates is losing as much as $30 million per year.

As you can tell in your market, Joe, advertisers don't necessarily care who sells a lot of papers if they perceive the readers of one publication to be lowlifes that they don't want in their stores scaring off paying customers. The sleaze factor can pump up circulation but hurt the bottom line. Look at the ads in your competition.