Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville to publish three days a week

Ugh. Just embarrassing.

 

My heart absolutely breaks for ALL those affected at the three papers. Several friends I know personally, through no fault of their own, got wiped off the professional map.

Yes, it happens in every profession. Yes, "the economy" has hit us all in one way or another. But this simply feels like Big Journalism is pumping bullets into its own head instead of fighting back.

Sigh.

rb

 

This is the morning after and I feel it's just the beginning. I wouldn't be surprised to see this song replayed in a few other cities, some of which are much bigger.

 

I like the first comment:

I don't see a list so they must have removed it, but the point stands. Niki, how is it a difficult time? Did you not read the headline and first graf? You're notifying your employees about job offers for new companies! You're taking another step in forming digitally-focused companies to serve digitally-focused companies in a digitally-focused age! And those who have not yet been offered jobs are being showered with gratitude and continued support! Gratitude and continued support! What a glorious time to be alive! Big Brother, in his undying love for us, is raising our chocolate ration from 100 grams to 30!

I'm concerned, Niki. Your comments about "difficult time" make me wonder if you are truly embracing our new, wonderful life.

 

No it didn't. It just gave me a bigger headache.

 

Yeah, it sucks... I always thought Mobile had the best paper in the state, followed by Birmingham.

I'm not a fan of the Tuscaloosa or Montgomery papers on any level.

Since I'm assuming the Alabama and Auburn beat writers at the Birmingham/Mobile papers were spared, I still think they're the best thing to read for college coverage, unless you go to one of the Rivals sites and I think ESPN was starting a site that would focus on both schols.

 

Been feeling this way for a while now.
When I started on this career path, I dreamed of ending up at a place like Birmingham or New Orleans. Both papers had great professional reputations, long-term stability, interesting cities to live in, and were probably either the big time or one step away, depending on your ultimate career goals. They were destination jobs.
Now?
I'd be scared to death if a job offer from a big paper came my way. It'd probably be too good to turn down, yet there's always the lingering spectre of layoffs, closings, uprooting your whole life for a job that might not exist in a year. It's not worth it. I haven't had a raise in three years at my current (small) shop and I'll probably never make much more than about $30K here, but at least it's somewhat stable. And even here, if I had any idea what else I wanted to do I'd be plotting an exit strategy.

I'm just one tiny cog in this industry -- who's not even good enough to work at a place like the Times-Picayune -- but I'm sure there's others that either see this too or are quickly realizing it. It's yet another thing that's going to kill journalism in this country. Once you see what's happening in Michigan, Alabama and New Orleans, what's the incentive to strive, achieve and work in those places?
Worse yet, when this venture fails miserably what's next? If they do try to either hire more staff for the web site or restart the print edition, who in their right mind is going to rush back to work there?

 

Batman,

I agree. It seems the larger papers are taking the hurt worse than the smaller ones in many instances.

 

I think everyone will suffer. I understand that Huntsville is being gutted and will basically be a bureau of Birmingham, which is 100 miles away. According to Wikipedia the Huntsville metropolitan area has a population of 417,000. And there will be no daily paper there.

And I believe that in Kalamazoo, where Newhouse did the same thing, they reduced the editorial staff to eight. And the Kalamazoo metropolitan area has a population of 324,000.

I think if Newhouse makes more money doing this consolidation you will see many companies move to one paper printing hard copy editions for a wide region. With the decline in circulation there is lots of capacity in printing plants to handle the demands of multiple papers.

 

I think it's a safe bet that chains that have quite a few papers in the same state/area are watching very closely to see how this works in Alabama.

 

http://www.postandcourier.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20120610%2FPC1002%2F120619938%2Fnewspaper-s-future-lies-in-both-digital-and-print

Didn't know if this deserved its own thread, so I posted here on this one.

 

OK, so that's the whole antithesis of the hyper-local philosophy. What they seem to be saying here is that readers and advertisers DON'T want local. Just give us the same state/national news that serves Birmingham, throw in a little local insert and we're fine.

So is this a major philosophical shift in attitudes surfacing?

As for consolidation in printing, I've seen that coming for a while and it makes sense. Printing presses are expensive and if you can handle the logistical demands of the distribution, why not print multiple papers at one location and truck them to wherever? (Until the price of gas gets to $9 per gallon, or whatever.)