The Christian Science Monitor will cease its daily publication and be printed once a week while focusing efforts on the Web. Gannett, owner of such local papers as the Courier-Post and the Wilmington News-Journal, is cutting its workforce by 10 percent, it was announced today. I'm glad I got out of the CP when I did, eight years ago. My wife, however, still works there. Layoffs are coming in the first week of December. Happy freaking holidays. Gannett stock is down to $9.50 a share. Its 52-week high was $42.50. Pity the ink-stained wretches.

The worst part about this, in my opinion, is that the newspapers that deserve to shut their doors - the backwoods, small-town rags with daily multiple misspellings, terrible grammar, and awful one-sided reporting - are the ones that will continue to exist another 20 years as their clientele continue to age and ignore any and all progress around them.

Meanwhile, actual decent newspapers with real writers (albeit underpaid) struggle to keep their readership as America continues to be dumbed down by a public school system that continually strives to find new ways to celebrate mediocrity.

Ok, I'm done.

Very sorry to hear that, GV. The timing is brutal.

Do you think there's potential for a large migration of workers who had been on the print side to new media jobs? Or is this a case of (from the corporate standpoint) a chance to be more efficient--the information equivalent of technology advances in manufacturing or agriculture that cut workforce while keeping output level or higher?

In either event, what always baffled me about the economics of print journalism was that the corporate masters pushed for workforce cuts despite what sounded like fantastically healthy profit margins. Can anyone explain that one?

Just from my point of view, it seems like corporations in the media industries are getting rid of the people that do the print, rather than switch them over to new media. They'd rather bring in fresh blood

The Dude wrote:Just from my point of view, it seems like corporations in the media industries are getting rid of the people that do the print, rather than switch them over to new media. They'd rather bring in fresh blood

Makes sense. They can pay 'em less, and I guess a less cynical reason would be that they're likely to arrive with the technology skills, more or less--not that it takes a genius to pick any of that up, or that older workers can't do it.

Sometimes i feel like dropping the inky as it's sport coverage on late games purely stinks.

My wife isn't the most tech-savvy staffer in the newsroom. Updating her facebook page and signing on to e-mail is about as high-tech as she goes. So I'm not sure she'd fit into the Web world.

The question becomes--why pay for news? The small town rags survive in part because they have news not available anywhere else. Our local rag (which is probably better than most) isn't available to non-subscribers on the web.

dajafi wrote:In either event, what always baffled me about the economics of print journalism was that the corporate masters pushed for workforce cuts despite what sounded like fantastically healthy profit margins. Can anyone explain that one?

If you're running a business, and the company is making money, does that mean you no longer work to improve it? Of course not. The profitability of newspapers was seen as short-term, and loyalty at the big papers (from what I've read) has been decreasing. And then you have corporate entities like Berkshire Hathaway running these newspapers like businesses and you get personnel cuts. It sucks, sure, but it's like any industry faced with declined or stalling demand. Ownership decides whether they're willing to eat losses to keep the workforce happy. Few owners are willing to do that.

Werthless wrote:

dajafi wrote:In either event, what always baffled me about the economics of print journalism was that the corporate masters pushed for workforce cuts despite what sounded like fantastically healthy profit margins. Can anyone explain that one?

If you're running a business, and the company is making money, does that mean you no longer work to improve it? Of course not. The profitability of newspapers was seen as short-term, and loyalty at the big papers (from what I've read) has been decreasing. And then you have corporate entities like Berkshire Hathaway running these newspapers like businesses and you get personnel cuts. It sucks, sure, but it's like any industry faced with declined or stalling demand. Ownership decides whether they're willing to eat losses to keep the workforce happy. Few owners are willing to do that.

What does it mean to run something like a business? Is it an exclusive focus on a short term bottom line, or does one attempt to make the best product as possible as efficiently as possible?

I work in trade/business publishing, which seems to be safer, by far, than the newspaper sector, but by no means completely safe. I left a small company that had been more or less going out of business for a decade last year to join a large publishing conglomerate with resources a-plenty.

I still think I made the right move and our products are well integrated into the Web. Most of them are dual print/Web products, with a few Web-only publications.

I played a pretty big role in helping move the Mom and Pop organization that I left last year into moving to the Web. They're still in business, remarkably. I would not have guessed it.

I am very angry about the way newspaper readership is declining. I think the entire industry, through some sort of advocacy group, ought to create an ad - whether for TV, Web, whatever - that points out what an incredible bargain a newspaper is 50 cents a day or whatever it costs. But up against the "I don't have time" and the "I don't like to read" mentality, I guess it wouldn't register.

BuddyGroom wrote:I work in trade/business publishing, which seems to be safer, by far, than the newspaper sector, but by no means completely safe. I left a small company that had been more or less going out of business for a decade last year to join a large publishing conglomerate with resources a-plenty.

I still think I made the right move and our products are well integrated into the Web. Most of them are dual print/Web products, with a few Web-only publications.

I played a pretty big role in helping move the Mom and Pop organization that I left last year into moving to the Web. They're still in business, remarkably. I would not have guessed it.

I am very angry about the way newspaper readership is declining. I think the entire industry, through some sort of advocacy group, ought to create an ad - whether for TV, Web, whatever - that points out what an incredible bargain a newspaper is 50 cents a day or whatever it costs. But up against the "I don't have time" and the "I don't like to read" mentality, I guess it wouldn't register.

Have you seen our print numbers? I posted them in another thread about this

We don't see any circulation numbers in our division.

Could you PM me with whatever you know? Thanks.

If you can remember the thread we talked about something like this, it's in there. I can get it tomorrow, but print advertising is down pretty dramatically all over the place, like 3 years in a row. That's what keeps print afloat.

Also, I don't think print newspapers are going b/c people hate reading it. I think people prefer checking it out online from work.

TenuredVulture wrote:

Werthless wrote:

dajafi wrote:In either event, what always baffled me about the economics of print journalism was that the corporate masters pushed for workforce cuts despite what sounded like fantastically healthy profit margins. Can anyone explain that one?

If you're running a business, and the company is making money, does that mean you no longer work to improve it? Of course not. The profitability of newspapers was seen as short-term, and loyalty at the big papers (from what I've read) has been decreasing. And then you have corporate entities like Berkshire Hathaway running these newspapers like businesses and you get personnel cuts. It sucks, sure, but it's like any industry faced with declined or stalling demand. Ownership decides whether they're willing to eat losses to keep the workforce happy. Few owners are willing to do that.

What does it mean to run something like a business? Is it an exclusive focus on a short term bottom line, or does one attempt to make the best product as possible as efficiently as possible?

I think it's a focus on the former. You're trying to turn a profit, and if that is best done by laying off 10% of the workers to cut costs (even at the expense of quality), then it will be done. As the Dude alluded to above, revenues are down. And the owners of newspapers are rarely family owned anymore; they now are answering to boards.

Werthless wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

Werthless wrote:

dajafi wrote:In either event, what always baffled me about the economics of print journalism was that the corporate masters pushed for workforce cuts despite what sounded like fantastically healthy profit margins. Can anyone explain that one?

If you're running a business, and the company is making money, does that mean you no longer work to improve it? Of course not. The profitability of newspapers was seen as short-term, and loyalty at the big papers (from what I've read) has been decreasing. And then you have corporate entities like Berkshire Hathaway running these newspapers like businesses and you get personnel cuts. It sucks, sure, but it's like any industry faced with declined or stalling demand. Ownership decides whether they're willing to eat losses to keep the workforce happy. Few owners are willing to do that.

What does it mean to run something like a business? Is it an exclusive focus on a short term bottom line, or does one attempt to make the best product as possible as efficiently as possible?

I think it's a focus on the former. You're trying to turn a profit, and if that is best done by laying off 10% of the workers to cut costs (even at the expense of quality), then it will be done. As the Dude alluded to above, revenues are down. And the owners of newspapers are rarely family owned anymore; they now are answering to boards.

But is it possible that cost cutting measures, leading to an inferior product, result in making something once profitable unprofitable? That is, over-relying on AP and other news pools, running 200 word bare-bones articles to simulate tv type coverage, and so forth help reduce costs, but in the end, you might as well watch tv news.

There is a technology issue here as well. However, if you turn out shit because it's cheap to do so, you're not going to make money, because no one wants to pay for shit.

Successful businesses pay attention to quality.

But the advertisers are already going to the web. It's much much cheaper for the papers/journals/etc. to put things online, without a real loss in quality. It's the same info, they just don't have to print thousands of copies. In turn, they can charge a little less to the advertisers, while still guaranteeing them a lot of eyes.

I'm yet to be convinced either way about the correlation between the decline of the print newspaper industry and a dropoff in the quality of journalism. Though maybe it's true that proving such a thing would be impossible anyway.

The Dude wrote:
Also, I don't think print newspapers are going b/c people hate reading it. I think people prefer checking it out online from work.

Yeah, I still don't understand why so many papers put their full content online for free. I guess they figured that maximum online readership would be the best for advertising. But now Web sites like Craig's List and JournalismJobs.com are killing newspaper classified business, print or online.

I'd be interested to see how the Wall Street Journal's subscription online business has worked out. I know the New York Times' attempt to make its Op Ed stuff an online pay service failed.

Before the Internet, I worked in downtown DC and there were newspaper boxes for lots out of town newspapers around major Metro stops. I used to head out around 3 pm every day and buy the Philadelphia Daily News. I haven't done that since I got online, and I don't think there even are Daily News boxes or Inquirer boxes in DC anymore. I think you can still get the Inquirer at Union Station or the airports but not on a busy street corner.

It's ads, not classified ads, but ads. Our medical journals get ads from drug companies and medical device companies. Philly.com gives away content for free b/c it gets readers, which raises the price of what they can charge advertisers. So, they may lose classified dollars, but more than make up for it with ads for travel to Scotland, credit check scores, and local theater tix