Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville to publish three days a week

[JayFarrar]

What I read is that the papers' web sites will remain free. FREE!

If the market can't support a daily paper in New Orleans and its 75 percent penetration or papers in Birmingham, or Huntsville or Mobile, then how can you justify daily papers in Memphis or Nashville or Jackson?

If it works in, and it won't, because the model in other places has shown that it doesn't, regardless you'll still see other media companies make this switch.

 

[Hank_Scorpio]

How much resources does annarbor.com devote to Michigan coverage? Are they traveling like the paper would, or staying at home for everything except maybe football?

They travel for football and most basketball. Don't think they traveled outside Michigan for hockey.

Michigan is playing Alabama in softball today. Not sure if they sent a reporter to that.

Any of the Olympic sports, they pretty much link to the UM athletic web site.


The other D-I A college in the area, they MIGHT staff home games, but not always.

Just to follow up on this:

Annarbor.com did not send a reporter with Michigan softball in the super regional. They used photos from Tuscaloosa paper. Story didn't have a byline on it, so not sure if it was rewrite or stringer.

 

[Mark2010]

Softball? I wonder how many papers do travel with softball.

As for the Alabama thing, I still can't see how anyone is making money on these web-first ideas. OK, so you have a reporter who writes a story, even breaks news. You put it on your website. I read the story on your website, which just gives me one less reason to buy your printed product, thereby decreasing circulation.

So where are you making revenue? Is anyone making substantial revenue on web only advertising? (heck, I never even notice ads on websites.) On pay services? How is this supposed to be working?

 

[Armchair_QB]

How much resources does annarbor.com devote to Michigan coverage? Are they traveling like the paper would, or staying at home for everything except maybe football?

They travel for football and most basketball. Don't think they traveled outside Michigan for hockey.

Michigan is playing Alabama in softball today. Not sure if they sent a reporter to that.

Any of the Olympic sports, they pretty much link to the UM athletic web site.


The other D-I A college in the area, they MIGHT staff home games, but not always.

Just to follow up on this:

Annarbor.com did not send a reporter with Michigan softball in the super regional. They used photos from Tuscaloosa paper. Story didn't have a byline on it, so not sure if it was rewrite or stringer.

Even if they were still printing a daily paper I highly doubt the AA News would send a reporter to Tuscaloosa for a softball super regional. The softball CWS? Probably.

 

[mjslovin91]

How much resources does annarbor.com devote to Michigan coverage? Are they traveling like the paper would, or staying at home for everything except maybe football?

They travel for football and most basketball. Don't think they traveled outside Michigan for hockey.

Michigan is playing Alabama in softball today. Not sure if they sent a reporter to that.

Any of the Olympic sports, they pretty much link to the UM athletic web site.


The other D-I A college in the area, they MIGHT staff home games, but not always.

Just to follow up on this:

Annarbor.com did not send a reporter with Michigan softball in the super regional. They used photos from Tuscaloosa paper. Story didn't have a byline on it, so not sure if it was rewrite or stringer.

Yeah, they ran a rewrite. Much easier when the game is nationally televised.

 

[slappy4428]

Couldn't help but notice what was lacking in today's Birmingham News.
Had another employer in town made such a drastic change in its business model, the News would jump all over user opinion.
While the TV stations were like vultures on a carcass before the 5 p.m. news on Thursday, with standups outside the building and reader reaction, in the print edition on Friday the changes were trumpted, but never was heard errr.... printed.... a discouraging word.

 

[SixToe]

Maybe they're saving the big news for the expanded Sunday edition.

 

[Yodel]

How much resources does annarbor.com devote to Michigan coverage? Are they traveling like the paper would, or staying at home for everything except maybe football?

They travel for football and most basketball. Don't think they traveled outside Michigan for hockey.

Michigan is playing Alabama in softball today. Not sure if they sent a reporter to that.

Any of the Olympic sports, they pretty much link to the UM athletic web site.


The other D-I A college in the area, they MIGHT staff home games, but not always.

Just to follow up on this:

Annarbor.com did not send a reporter with Michigan softball in the super regional. They used photos from Tuscaloosa paper. Story didn't have a byline on it, so not sure if it was rewrite or stringer.

In 2001, (I think) I was a stringer for Ann Arbor when Michigan played in the softball regional in Tuscaloosa. So they didn't travel even back then for softball.

 

[JosephC.Myers]

It's exciting!

Talk about a very subjective word.

 

[TGO157]

Softball? I wonder how many papers do travel with softball.

As for the Alabama thing, I still can't see how anyone is making money on these web-first ideas. OK, so you have a reporter who writes a story, even breaks news. You put it on your website. I read the story on your website, which just gives me one less reason to buy your printed product, thereby decreasing circulation.

So where are you making revenue? Is anyone making substantial revenue on web only advertising? (heck, I never even notice ads on websites.) On pay services? How is this supposed to be working?

The idea is you would pay to read the Website. Ads on a Website cost much less than ads in print, but the production of an actual newspaper (design staff, paper printing costs, a press or outsourcing the actual printing job, etc) costs more than it does to maintain a Website. That stuff was all explained to me by someone.

So, I can assume that this is the economic side: while the actual revenue is lower, the expense is also lower and the idea is the difference in expense from before to now is greater than the difference in revenue from before to now.

I could be wrong but it makes sense to me.

 

[podunk press]

There's an online model that works, but it involves almost constant work to pull it off. And a staff of, oh, about six people. Preferably two of whom write for free.

BLOGGERS! are slowly figuring it out.

 

[Stitch]

Softball? I wonder how many papers do travel with softball.

As for the Alabama thing, I still can't see how anyone is making money on these web-first ideas. OK, so you have a reporter who writes a story, even breaks news. You put it on your website. I read the story on your website, which just gives me one less reason to buy your printed product, thereby decreasing circulation.

So where are you making revenue? Is anyone making substantial revenue on web only advertising? (heck, I never even notice ads on websites.) On pay services? How is this supposed to be working?

The idea is you would pay to read the Website. Ads on a Website cost much less than ads in print, but the production of an actual newspaper (design staff, paper printing costs, a press or outsourcing the actual printing job, etc) costs more than it does to maintain a Website. That stuff was all explained to me by someone.

So, I can assume that this is the economic side: while the actual revenue is lower, the expense is also lower and the idea is the difference in expense from before to now is greater than the difference in revenue from before to now.

I could be wrong but it makes sense to me.

Online revenue cannot support a news operation as we know it on the local level, with the exception of the largest papers in the country. What will happen at most places if they stick around is the Huffington Post model with a couple of paid reporters for investigative work or major beats, but everything else covered by low-paid or unpaid contributors.

Subscriptions and rack sales are supposed to be a break-even proposition to pay for pritinting and distribution. Print ad revenue pays for everthing else. I doubt online ad revenue would approach 15 percent of print ad revenue.