OK, so now you're a three-day-a-week SE ...

Well, the people who have actually accomplished enough in this life to, you know, actually own and run these newspapers think that it is. So tell us more about your philosophy.

 

The more I think about this, I'm thinking it COULD work, if set up properly. It seems for many of us in smaller markets, the Monday and Tuesday papers are the slowest of the week. Mondays edition was full with national stuff and Tuesday was always my day to run wire features and such to fill the space. I liked it because I could dress stuff up, run long-forum features, get creative, etc. without a lot of prep stuff getting in the way. But it certainly was expendable.

From an advertising standpoint, you basically take seven days worth of ads into three editions. Maybe that means the papers are actually larger on those days. Do you lose much ad revenue by going only three days? Maybe, but probably not so much as to offset the savings by not printing the four extra days.

You still do a web product seven days a week, but I'd be willing to bet the content on Monday night is nowhere near the content on a Saturday night.

It's inevitable that some things are going to get shafted. If the president gets shot or 9/11 happens on a day you are not scheduled to publish, do you do a special edition?

For regular items, such as Friday night high school football (and other sports), well that just goes online if you don't have a Saturday edition. Or you can block out space for it in the larger, improved Sunday section if you see fit.

Anyway, biweeklies and thrice-weeklies have been around for years and they survive. Many of us have just gotten used to a DAILY paper because we grew up with it. Maybe we just have to change our thinking a bit.

 

yes, because owning a thrice-weekly that gives away it's product four days a week is a huge accomplishment in life.
good work.
hell, let's say you sell -- practically giving it away -- your online product, to what, a handful of people? how long are you going to fight off BK?

 

There is a dividing line between those who accept the reality that they must execute a bad decision to the best of their ability, and those who see it or pretend to see it as beneficial. It's the difference between having to bend so far that your head is touching your asshole, which unfortunately is required, or shoving your head entirely up it, which is optional.

 

hey, fuck, frank, why are we pretending that this business is something that it's not?
if somebody is going to blatantly lie and throw me under the bus while doing as much, i'm not going to ignore said lie. most three-day-a-week papers that are giving away or nearly giving away their collective online content are treading water ... holding off the inevitable. christ, admitting as much is a bad thing?

 

But more people are reading the paper.

 

Frank, at this point we don't know if it is a bad decision or not.

I'm sure if someone out there had a genius "how to save the newspaper industry" blueprint, it would be in use by now. The reality is that something ain't working and we can't just expect that because something worked well in the 1990s, it will continue that way forever. Lots of changes in society over the years; lots of industries died out or evolved. Being an SID has changed with the internet age, too.

My position on this is evolving. I frankly won't be all that sad to see the printing presses go.

I won't miss the early deadlines because of delivery issues.

I won't miss the tight newsholes on busy news days.

I won't miss someone cutting my 25-inch masterpiece to 14 because something else needs to get on the page.

I won't miss losing (or gaining) an extra page at 9 p.m. because classified slop went long (or short).

I won't miss not being able to run color the one time in 14 years my city's minor league baseball team wins a league title because a part on the press broke.

Heck, I won't even miss the extra newspapers piling up at my house.

Frankly, my job won't change that much. I'll still interview people. I'll still research things. I'll still attend events. I'll still offer analysis and commentary. I'll still edit stories and select photos. I'll still get bitchy calls and emails from parents accusing me of costing their beloved child a scholarship.

I won't have to worry about a late game going extra innings and screwing up deadline, cause I can always push it back a few minutes.

My salary will actually increase, because the company won't have to divert resources to purchasing newsprint, ink and fixing the press or paying a press crew.

More people will read my work, because the morons decide to offer it for free!

All in all, this new world might not be such a bad thing.

 

Um, you actually believe that?

 

I second this. Only people who will see their salaries go up are the corporate execs and publishers. Chances of this trickling down to reporters and editors anytime soon is highly unlikely.

 

Think about it. Now this is on the assumption that revenues stay at the same level as present (which seems to be the underlying assumption on the part of those making these decisions).

So you have X number of dollars coming in. Stays constant.

You have fewer pieces of the pie to cut with said revenue. Each piece should, hypothetically, be larger. It takes less expense to operate and maintain a website than it does run a printing press.

Thus, in theory, you have more revenue at the end than you previously did because you have cut overhead. Does that not make financial sense? Now whether it works or not, only time will tell. Will revenues plummet? Who knows? But I suspect this is the strategy. Why else would you gut your product except as a last resort?

As for publishers and execs being greedy so-and-sos, look that is common in any industry to think the suits are out to intentionally screw the little guy. I hear it from people in all professions: banking, real estate, school teaching, retail, transportation, etc. Maybe it's true and maybe it's not. Bottom line, if you want to make big money, become a suit. If you got into the business because it is what you want to do with your days, then do that.

 

I think this may be an example of that oft-misused phrase "begging the question." At any rate, nothing the 3-day crowd has said to this point prevents them from metering or throttling their sites to push people in the direction of buying online versions.

That can be part of a workable strategy, based on the experience of other markets. Whether that is their intention, I do not know.

 

Will large numbers of people be willing to pay for online content? I dunno. I don't. So far, no one I know has made a killing on online ads or subscriptions. Be interested to see if that will change.