More DMN updates

I've been arguing this for years for larger papers. With the exception of that rare story with universal appeal, people are interested in their school only. If there is a once-a-decade star in the area, people will want to read about him/her regularly. And maybe a few times a year there is an issues or human-interest story so compelling that there is wide appeal. But the average preps feature is a waste of space. News, gamers, roundups and stats are the way to go.

There is no getting around it, the cost per reader is going to be higher on high school stories than on pro and major-college stories. That doesn't mean we ought to reduce coverage because preps is probably the most effective way to get kids in the habit of reading us. But we need to recognize that the audience is highly fractionalized and that a roundup with 40 schools is going to have a higher readership than a 25-inch feature on one team.

 

That coverage, to me, is among the very few ways to get young people opening the paper.

 

No. If we're lucky, they'll read it onlline but for the most part, they don't ever bother opening a paper.

 

It's an incontrovertible fact: where we live, they read the HS coverage of their schools, and would not crack the paper otherwise.

 

At my last newspaper stop, they did read the HS coverage of their schools. But only online.

 

Re: More DMN updates, something NEW

This guy says the Morning News should cut 200 more jobs in editorial, and cut copy editors' pay from $60,000 to $45,000, etc. I'm sure it will be warmly received:

http://www.dmagazine.com//article.asp?articleid=1141

 

I have to doubt the author's knowledge of the biz when he says high up that classified pays the freight. Even at a classified-heavy place like the NYT Co., classified is about a third of the revenue. It's a bit less elsewhere:

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=105317&p=irol-newsArticle_Print&ID=895881&highlight=

And classified has high labor costs with all those ad-takers working the phones.

Note also that classified revenue includes legals, which is a huge source of income everywhere.

 

That. Is. Tremendous.

 

that's quite a bit steep to question the author's knowledge of the newspaper business because of his assertion that classified's pay the frieght. Even if he's off on his numbers, classified is a large portion of the old business model...and it's just that...old.

His suggestions are right in line in with the re-creation of this business. But from a copy editor's perspective... you get what you pay for. $60K to $45K maybe in line with product regeneration, but that's an unhealthy cut. Getting rid of the old guard and the $200K plus editors should be the No. 1 priority.

You need younger, hungrier and aggressively intelligent people running the show...then in 19 years, it will be a new generation's turn.

 

Oh, yes. It pays the freight so much that the San Diego daily started running private-party classifieds for FREE last year. If you followed the business of newspapering at all, you'd have known that.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20050828-9999-1b28classif.html

 

OK...so, great, Classifieds are not paying the frieght any longer...they used to. I think that's the point you are missing. They started giving the ads free last year, yet they didn't for the previous 138 years the Union Trib has been in business.

So, let's see is it more likely the author of the above is looking forward for The DMN or historically, which you seem to be. History's over, which way are we going now?

You took issue with the author's knowledge based on this? So let's say he got this one wrong, he must certainly have gotten the other four correct...wouldn't you say?