The New Orleans Times-Picayune May Reduce Frequency of Publication -- NY Times

Well, that's the huge gamble.

The way it has been explained to me, there were too many days when there wasn't enough advertising to justify the cost of printing a paper. I suspect if execs felt they were turning down mass revenue, they wouldn't do it. I suspect the theory is "we'll still get 90 percent of the ad revenue we have now, while cutting production expenses by 50 percent or so".

If enough major advertisers bail, because they don't want to go online or see the paper as worthwhile anymore, then I suspect the execs will reconsider their decision later. ("Who the bleep decided to draft that JaMarcus Russell dude in the first place?")

The people who are most likely to get hurt in this are the pressmen, pre-press and delivery. Sure some editorial employees might be dropped, but chances are that was coming pretty soon, anyway.

All I see in this is a way to cut major expenses that wouldn't have been viable in the pre-internet era.

 

My prediction: They'll be online only by the end of 2013.

 

Perhaps. If that's true, doesn't it validate the decision to cut back now?

 

So the print edition will just be blog posts and tweets cobbled together? Good gosh.

 

We went "web first" a couple years ago.

Not much changed, really, other than we wrote more stories that were somewhat shorter. If the content providers do their jobs correctly, there will be more than enough news to choose from.

Wouldn't want to be an editor trying to put together those print editions, though. Yikes.

 

The answer - for Newhouse - is the print product will be cobbled together off what the reporters do online. Reporters won't actually be writing for print at all.

 

I can see that. Words are words. Photos are photos. Only thing that has changed is the delivery method. Now instead of telling a reporter "15 inches and not a word longer", I can truthfully say "write whatever you need to tell the story".

As a copy desk person, I could care less whether a story has been previously posted online. The online part was always more thing to do at the end of the night when I was tired, because the paper wouldn't hire a dedicated online editor. Occasionally, I'd come up with polls and other online features just to jazz things up. We did a Super Bowl poll once, a poll evolving from one of my enterprise pieces, high school polls, etc. Our photogs did online galleries, which made them feel good because it was a platform to display more of their work than the print edition could.

So while I'm intellectually curious about how it will work from the advertising and management standpoint, I honestly think the newsroom will be the least affected.

 

That's one of the things that has always worried me. I don't think it's necessarily in the best interest of the story to be without limits.

 

That's why good editors are still necessary, Shot. I remember many times leaving a 15-inch hole for a story that came in at 19, but had to be cut to 12 in order to make any sense. Will be nice to be able to do the editing on a per-story basis without having to worry about what to do with that space that's left over when you cut all the bullshit.

 

When reading copy, when I get to the point where I get bored or say "didn't I already read this fact?", I know it's time to cut. I've read 80-inch stories that flowed so well I was totally engrossed and I've read 12-inchers that left me thinking "eh, whatever".

I agree with FileNotFound. The nice part is not having page dimensions and newshole dictate how long a story has to be.

 

When Tom Benson can justifiably call out your decision making, things have come to a pretty pass.

http://www.wwltv.com/news/Tom-Benson-sends-letter-asking-for-reconsideration-of-Times-Picayune-changes-155463605.html

 

But I can guarantee you there will still be people saying, "You know what, no one's going to read all that. Get it to 500 words." And they'll point to plenty of studies that show you start losing readers at 600 words because online readers want their news fast and don't have attention spans for long-form stories.

Is it crap? Sure it is. But to say that because you're posting online means you have unlimited space is naive. Sure, some stories will get long-form treatment, but if you're at a decent shop, they should be able to get that now in print whenever possible. For the most part, however, stories will be expected to come in under a word limit so that readers stay engaged. You're cutting will still come, it'll just be in words instead of inches.

And if you FNF, if you're shop can't adjust to the instance you're talking about, you need better editors and designers. If a story comes in long and gets trimmed to shorter than the hole, then you adjust the page. You don't run crap. Period.