What should we do? Very serious question..

Subscription-based online sites don't work.
Perhaps they will in the future, but right now they aren't viable.
It's very hard to get people to even register for a site, let alone pay for it.

 

BTE ... No, I understand why Philadelphia or Minneapolis or Boston wouldn't send a reporter to the NBA finals. But that never stopped them before from covering the championship series of what's perceived as the No. 2 or 3 sport in this country. Maybe papers are wising up and cutting the fat.

 

I interviewed at a major midwest paper earlier this year. The topic of cutbacks/streamlining came up and the SE said their paper didn't have any agate clerks on staff. Instead, they farm the agate to a third party company in Canada who puts those pages together and sends it to the printing plant. The plus is that the paper doesn't have to pay six clerks twenty-some odd thousand dollars a year. The negative is that the paper doesn't know if they have undiscovered young talent.

 

The ship be sinkin'.

 

But JR, you know JW has to have his own thread.

 

I don't see where it's his question to ask. He's got the electronic media backup. Better we should worry about the people who don't have that.

 

Cheaper expenses, probably helps circulation a little, but where does the revenue come from? You're not getting the same rates for online ads as you are in print, and we all know where the money comes from. So that's the issue, at least right now.

So the question we need to be asking -- although it's not our question to deal with or even answer -- is how do you make online advertising profitable? Because that's the next step for newspapers. And that's where the change comes from.

 

i dreamed of being a newspaper columnist. i love newspapers.

but newspapers are not adapting well to the new age....it won't be long until rivals.com hires a columnist who will be more influential than newspaper columnists.... newspapers refused to cover recruiting thoroughly, so a web site popped up and is doing the issue justice....

when will some newspaper sports section have the balls to ignore the apse formula and dramatically change its approach?

 

The best thing that could happen is for the terrible chains to die -- and to die quickly -- so some people with a clue have a shot at the revenue and righting the ship.

This industry had one last shot to redeem itself in 1999 and 2000. It chose to binge on "young effin' studs" and then to purge people 18 months later.

It deserves to die and to die painfully. One of the posters here criticizes Bush for not having intellectual curiosity.

There is very little intellectual curiosity in today's newsrooms.

 

Agate. Outsourced.

Now I've seen everything.

 

Rivals deals in rumors. It has its niche and it is the best at what it does.

If newspapers can't find the money to cover NHL road games or the NBA finals, then there's no way they have the resources to cover high school football recruiting.

Newspapers also have journalistic ethics standards to uphold -- printing a rumor a day that Mr. 17-year-old defensive lineman has narrowed down his top 3 to State U, State Tech and Out-of-State U isn't newsworthy. And a great, great majority of people, locally and nationally, don't care except when it concerns their kid or kids they know.

 

That be me. And there's little intellectual curiosity in this entire country right now. A great many selfish people care about big issues only when/where it concerns/affects their individual lives.