Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville to publish three days a week

Hey, bright side ... At least they won't have to tussle with the 580 Friday night football games on that crazy deadline -- what with NO Saturday paper.

Sigh.

rb

 

Remember, everything is digital now. Deadlines mean nothing. Guys will write, tweet skype information continuously. The paper is secondary.

 

Recipe for disaster.

 

People buy the paper for the coupons and the classifieds.

At one bastion of journalistic excellence for which I toiled, we would run an announcement on the A1 rail on Sat and Sun announcing how many dollars worth of coupons and how many jobs listings were in the Sunday paper. Of course, no one cared about the content.

 

You live here? When we doing lunch?

 

It was a CNHI paper.

 

The thing I find unique about the media industry is the response of ownership to a downturn.

When Ford when down management tried to build better cars. When McDonalds went down they reemphasized store cleanliness and introduced the McCafe to compete with Starbucks.

When a newspaper sees a decline in subscribers the publisher sends a note to the effect of this:

For many years this company has pulled immense amounts of money out of your local paper. Unfortunately we have not figured how to make money on the internet and our profits have declined from what they used to be. Therefore, we can no longer afford to offer the same quality product. So we will be cutting the size of your paper and increasing the subscription price.

Moving to a Better Tomorrow

Your Publisher

 

A decade after building a newsroom, Press-Register puts it up for sale.

http://www2.wkrg.com/news/2012/jul/03/shrinking-press-register-will-permanently-change-m-ar-4079011/?referer=None&shorturl=http://bit.ly/LkOiMz

 

Huntsville's building is for sale, too.

Reports say the press will be dismantled and shipped to other Newhouse sites still smart enough to print daily.

 

Readers and advertisers are finding out they can live without a paper.

I will admit I haven't had a subscription in several years. When I worked in the industry, I would pick up a copy at the office. After I left, I really had no desire to have all the papers cluttering up my house. If I wanted to find out about something local, I went to the website.

 

I understand that.

But cutting the quality of the print product will only accelerate the trend. And print is still where the bulk of revenues are.

 

Oh I agree. More and more people are seeing they can do without a daily newspaper. And if/when the economy improves, they will have little reason to re-subscribe.