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

Sure, we all can become president of the Wykoff, N.J. bank

 

Any notion writers woud get more money makes me laugh in a sad way.

 

But the issue isn't really "making a killing," is it? It's using all the tools at your disposal to build a revenue model.
And I didn't even get into the whole mobile device thing, which seems to be evolving as a different animal - people will pay for stuff!

 

People will pay for games and video. I doubt people will pay for a mobile app for news besides those with national brand recognition. Podunk Mobile will make diddly squat.

 

See, I think they would if the app was more personalized. They need to be able to open the app and see immediately the news they feel is important to them, not just the stuff we decide is breaking news or the most important news. If they want to see the news about their kid's school's football team first, then that needs to be up front. If they want the latest recipes, that needs to be there. If they want city council stuff, that's there.

The NYT has shown people will pay for content. Some sites, ours included, have shown people will pay for local content. The key is finding out how people in your community want their news delivered and getting it to them.

 

Mark, in terms of cutting cost theoretically increasing salary for writers, isn't the whole reason most execs are cutting because the profit margin isn't good enough? If that's the case, you have to figure the goal in cutting is to bump up that profit margin. I doubt there's much trickle-down to the writers.

 

Perhaps, Thomas. We are talking hypothetical here.

I still think the changes will save newsroom jobs in the long run, albeit at the expense of pressroom and delivery. I just think people looked at overhead and realize where their greatest expenses lie and how to trim that without cutting revenue too much. Will it work? Only time will tell.

If it does, I expect more and more places will ditch the presses and become "paperless papers". If not, then I expect places like this will backtrack, resume a heftier printing schedule and try something else.

Honestly, in terms of salaries, I doubt much will change. There's just a certain level at which people are hireable. Would you pay someone $40 an hour to work the register at Walmart just because you could? The majority of writing jobs are fine at the level they currently are, IMO.

 

Great point. I would guess the techies out there can figure out a way to customize an app to where one's most important news gets higher play. So if large numbers of people are willing to pay for this, maybe there's a future in it.

 

I can count on my hand the number of newspaper mobile apps that are high-quality enough to get people to pay. Programmers who can code a decent app won't be working for a newspaper chain, unless it's the WSJ, NY Times, Washington Post, or maybe the Tribune group that would pay a decent-enough salary.

 

Stitch, can't things like that be developed. I mean tech people are inventing new stuff all the time, eh?