Lupica is laid off

Actually, vinyl is making a comeback. Just sayin'

 

This is what I love about journalists. Smartasses to the core! Well played, dooley.

 

No argument here. There have been and still are some real scumbags in this business.

 

Good arguments all, but you can throw out anything you know about corporate newspapers when discussing the Daily News. This owner rescued the paper out of bankruptcy in 1993, twice bought new presses, and even in good years made less profit than probably anyone else would accept. Sure, he's worth $2B, but he's also 78 and knows the company needs to become more self-sufficient if it has any hope of outliving him. The paper's losses have been estimated by outsiders as $20 million to $30 million per year, but the Post's estimated annual losses of $70 million are being subsidized by an even richer owner. It's not a real business competition, it's its own animal. For decades it hasn't been about making money but how much the owners of the two tabs are willing to lose. I've got no beef with Mort -- he's done better by the paper than anyone else would have. Is it still worth reading? Well, there has been no features section Monday and Tuesday, so they must miss me (they do! they really do!), but the sports section has still been worth the purchase, and the front of the paper is still interesting. No more biz section, which makes it kind of strange to be located in the Financial District, but, hey, Mort made his bucks in real estate, so who am I to question that? Haven't canceled home delivery yet. I'd be lying if I didn't admit I miss it.

 

Veteran sportswriters struggle to come to terms with being laid off by New York Daily News | Poynter.

final number was 12 in sports, not counting Lupica

 

That's just not correct. Suits made too many mistakes. The first was believing all the hot shots who said this thing called the Internet is the key to the future, but wait, you cannot charge for your product anymore. This Internet information all has to be free. The suits bit because they think their reporters' and columnists' content is trash, it's not worth a penny to read anyway. So they created this free online product and the rest is history (getting rid of all the older 'name' writers; thinking citizen journalists could do the job; having the worst sales people in any industry). Cmon. The suits didn't believe their product was worth a shit, worth buying or selling ads for, so they gave it away for free. People still want newspapers; they just don't want these pieces of trash, gutted pieces of trash with nothing in them.

 

Or it's what happens what happens when a new technology--the Internet--usurps your biggest asset: your local monopoly over the delivery system. That-and thus ads, real estate listings, and, as Craigslist showed, classifieds-drove newspaper profits, not the quality editorial content. Once you eliminated competitors, the high fixed costs made it difficult for any new competitor to challenge an incumbent, regardless of the quality of the publication. (Inner-city traffic, in fact, helped lead to the demise of afternoon newspaper.)

Truth is, newspapers don't really make sense as a product in an Internet world. There really isn't any need to bundle most of the information they provide in one place. Readers don't need the vast majority of what newspapers produce. And it's not just that quality has declined as staffs have been cut. Large numbers of readers probably received the newspaper because they wanted TV listings, box scores, movie times, ads, etc.-you can easily get that elsewhere now. The Internet rendered even services like stuffing your paper with AP copy of foreign and national news irrelevant.

 

Almost everything on the internet can be read for free. From places other than newspaper web sites. Did those "suits" get it wrong, too?

 

Newspapers were doomed as soon as the classifieds were gone.

Blame Craig.

 

There isn't any need to "bundle the information newspapers provide in one place." That's because newspapers did that to themselves by posting stories on the internet throughout the day and rendering its material old news.

A good newspaper once covered local issues and sports very well with reporters who actually made a livable wage and were good at covering their communities and sports teams. Most papers had sports columnists and writers who were well known in fact and had a brand. Now they've all been laid off. The ones that remain have their columns placed on the Internet many hours before the printed product hits the streets.

A good newspaper broke stories in these areas and set the standard for discussion of these issues. People have forgotten that because now everything is put online for free throughout the day and no unique information is 'saved' for the newspaper, so people have forgotten that newspapers are normally the best sources for LOCAL NEWS that everybody wants. Now other outlets are just stealing the information newspapers post on twitter and nobody realizes the value of the local newspaper anymore. Newspapers did it to themselves, so I'm not defending them, but there actually is a place for bundling the information for people to read about their communities. It's tougher now because newspapers have scooped themselves by going online first and not saving/valuying their unique information stories.

 

You just don't get it.