Detroit newspapers losing "daily" tag?

Late games and/or late-breaking news.

 

Rare in Detroit unless the Wings are out of town or the Tigers are playing on the west coast.

 

Or if you live on the west side of the state or anywhere outstate, where the Freep has just early stuff in it anyway.

 

Just chiming in ....

My subscription to the Miami Herald pays for itself. I use at least $5 in coupons each week at Publix. Sometimes more.

What I read in the paper, spread out on the kitchen table with my breakfast, is a bonus.

 

What manager gets fired at 4 a.m.? What trade occurs at 4 a.m.? If you live in Los Angeles, sure, it makes sense to be on the Net to read the NYT at 8 a.m. But you gain nothing by looking at the LAT online at 8 a.m.

 

Didn't Willie Randolph get fired at 3 a.m. New York time?

I understand your point, though.

 

But if you lived outstate, you'd likely be getting the Grand Rapids, Muskegon, or Kalamazoo papers.

 

Deadline for the statewide edition is actually 8:30 or 8:45 if you really push it. Sometimes, it's gone in as late as 9 before backshop starts to yelp. Not that that makes much of a difference for sports.

 

When I first heard this, my reaction was much like those contained on these 8 pages. And as a home delivery subscriber, I would be royally pissed if I was told I wouldn't be getting a paper several days a week, so from a personal standpoint, I don't like the decision.

But, as I think it over, from a business perspective, perhaps this isn't that bad of a move. I would contend that the Detroit papers are more than just a little premature, a bit ahead of the game. But, I won't be surprised to see others, many others, follow this approach somewhere down the road.

Consider:

75% of adults use the internet today. And that's an increase of 4% in a little over a year. Additionally, your internet users are higher educated (95% of college educated people use the net) and more affluent (95% for those over $75K).

http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/User_Demo_10%2020%2008.htm

The most telling stat, though, is the 91% for 18-29 year olds. Us older folks may not like it, but this age group, and even more so for others to come, are growing up in an environment where they communicate and gather information online and in real time. Check this group out in an airport, at the bus stop, at a coffee shop--you just don’t see this demographic reading the paper; they’re on their phone, or their blackberry, or their laptop. Eventually, the demographic shift will require business to adapt—for the newspaper business to move from print to electronic as the primary means of delivery. The smart ones will figure out when the right time is for making that switch—2010, 2015, 2025?

So, the question becomes how to drive the revenue. Do you need to be a pay site? I just don’t think that works—that you can compete against all the other free sites out there. That horse left the barn a long, long time ago. People made internet content available free of charge from the start, and it’s too ingrained and too much of an accepted practice to really think you can reverse course now.

So, then it comes to how to maximize ad revenue. Obviously, companies like Yahoo have found a way to make the internet work from an ad standpoint (unless I’ve missed the print version of Yahoo at my local newsstand). And you can do so much more with an ad on the internet. Instead of a static picture and copy, you can bring it to life, make it move, make it interactive, what should be a “stickier” experience for the advertiser with their potential customer.

Coupons? Now, I’m not your Connie Coupon-clipper, but probably the last three coupons I used were from the internet—either something in my email or from clicking through a site. Can you replicate someone who wants to clip out 25 coupons to take to the grocery store—probably not going to solve for that person. But, you can probably draw in others who might find value in getting the occasional discount through some well placed ads.

And to the car ads, is looking through an entire section of cars for sale a better experience than searching on the web. I would argue it isn’t—takes longer and you might miss something. Figure out a way to build a cool way within the paper for someone to find out about a car they want, who and where they can buy it from. Turn it into a frickin’ video game if you like.

You guys are right that the old folks will hate, hate, hate this. Many may cancel, sure. But, eventually, reality will have to be faced or ignored; and ignoring it will lead to decline and dissolution—probably sooner than later.

The Detroit move is a bold move. One I don’t like, and definitely too early in my view. But, in some respects, the right move.

 

Oh, sure. But if you picked up a Freep or News sight-unseen, you wouldn't get those scores. It's one advantage the Booth papers have over the Freep in Michigan, since they're afternoons.

 

There, fixed the quote function for you.

And if you had read what I wrote, I said that would be why you'd be getting the GR, Muskegon, Kalamazoo papers instead most likely.