Chicago Tribune eliminates Bears game stories

Some of it's been here before. Some of it's been elsewhere before. Some of it's new.

Have to stagger the ideas along the way. Otherwise, it's like Warrant: One good album with lots of hits, then nothing.

 

Frank - how's the plan working so far? Face it, you are a dinosaur and so are your idea's. Folks like you are why the newspaper business is in the crapper.

 

No, Boom, a lack of people like Frank are one of the reasons the business is in the crapper.

I don't agree with Frank on everything -- I think he undervalues opinion (insightful, not talk-radio-type crap) vs. hard news -- but the business would be in a lot better shape if people such as him were making the decisions.

His "feud" with you notwithstanding.

 

Thanks for writing, sir or madam. We are always pleased to consider the ideas of our readers. Be assured that we will give your input the consideration it deserves. Thanks again.

 

DP, serious question: How much design work have you done in your career? I don't ask to be snarky. I'm just trying to guage exactly where you're coming from. Know-it-all copy editors are no better than know-it-all designers, know-it-all writers, etc. While it is not optimal in many situations to have people multi-task, that's the future of this business. The young people in this business now who have experience writing, editing and designing will always be able to find jobs, no matter which direction the business goes. I understand there are many people who are strictly writers, strictly designers, strictly copy editors and so on. And they certainly have their place. But specialists are becoming rarer by the day. You may not like it, but that's reality. I think one of the problems in the business are supervisors who don't understand the processes that go into producing a daily paper. Maybe they know writing, or design, or editing, but they approach every situation from the singular thing they understand. That's usually a disaster. The best supervisors are the ones who know where everyone's coming from, at least to some extent. If lack of specialization creates more of those people, I'm all for it. And contrary to what you and others think, there are many people in this business who can do more than one thing successfully -- sometimes at the same time.

 

Dear Mr Big Shot Editor

Please cancel my subscription to your paper. I think you have lost touch with our community and no longer serve our needs.

Good luck in all future endeavors.

A Long Time Reader.

 

How can I explain this to you better? We know our readership comprises many different types, but we can find a norm. If we knee-jerk every time someone from the fringe goes into a tizzy, that would make a poor business model because people like them do not exist in sufficient numbers to affect circulation one way or another. It would be stupid to cater to the 1 or 2 percent who abandon us each year at the expense of those who choose to stay, especially since those who leave do so for a variety of reasons, many of them having nothing to do with editorial content.

Newspapers get in trouble by not understanding their primary market and allowing small but vocal fringe sections of that market to influence their decisions. Some sports editors, for instance, allow themselves to be swayed too much by what they hear on the way into work on sports talk radio, forgetting that ratings for such stations are usually not all that good and that obsessive sports fans represent a tiny (but shrill) portion of the sports section's readership. In your market, Boom, the two all-sports stations rank 17th and 30th among 34 stations in the market:

http://www.nyradioguide.com/ratings.htm

Of course we would rather not lose any reader. But we have to focus on our norm and disregard complaints by people outside that norm, such as you.

 

You mean like MEs who cower in their offices and judge the paper with next-day critiques and by how it looks? Those types of supervisors?

The rest of your post already has been answered.

 

If each one of you gave me a dollar for every time you were told (by an SE, an ME, a publisher, whomever) to change something in your paper because "we got a phone call from an angry parent" ... I'd be sitting on the beach sipping drinks like Milton. ;D

 

I've been told by an ME that each complaint represents a much larger group of readers who just didn't take the time to respond. Not sure about the logic there, but that's what I was told.

 

This may have been covered earlier in the thread, but the biggest problem is that we're trying to be all things to all people. That won't work. History has proven organizations that try to pander to every group fail because they end up angering every group.

We're stretching ourselves too thin. Beat writers are blogging, writing hard news and notebooks on an almost-daily basis, to go along with broadcast media duties. When does it become diminishing returns for the newspaper? In an effort to create multi-media superstars, we're hurting the original product.

I think the NY Times has hit on something with its website and sports coverage. Stories are almost immediately posted on the website, so anyone with an account can read. But readers have to pay to read columns on the site. However, if a reader plunks down spare change in the morning, they get the column in the paper plus the national and metro and every other section. That system makes accentuates the strengths of the paper and the website.

Just one man's opinion.

 

Soccer fans. Need I say more?