Monday, May 04, 2009

Jersey Confidential: Issue 05.04.09

A comments forum, exclusively for N.J. Group news. (Archives.)

17 comments:

  1. Regional Desk starts today. Should be "interesting."

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  2. Can someone post the latest (real) ABC circ numbers for the NJ papers? Please.

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  3. COURIER NEWS:

    Sunday went down 4,034 copies from 31,373 (3/31/08 ABC Audit) to 27,339 (3/31/09 ABC FASFAX), a drop of roughly 13%.

    Daily went down 4,171 copies from 26,862 to 22,691, a drop of roughly 16%.

    HOME NEWS TRIBUNE:

    Sunday went down 5,408 copies from 54,177 to 48,769, a drop of roughly 10%.

    Daily went down 6,841 copies from 49,084 to 42,243, a drop of roughly 14%.

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  4. former_CN_ad_rep5/04/2009 12:31 PM

    Can the year-after-year double-digit percentage losses in circulation be correlated to the person who is in the top editor's seat??

    Someone please tell PG that he needs to stop bragging about the $5,000 executive chair in his private office in Somerville. REALLY.

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  5. Part of the HNT circulation problem is that the people running the newsroom have no clue about the geography, the people, the issues, or the area the paper has traditionally served. They also have no idea what the now former readers liked about the paper or why they subscribed to it. Worse, they think they do. Worse yet, they really don't care about it. They care only about protecting themselves and their jobs and their friends. I wouldn't buy it either. It has nothing left to offer Middlesex County.

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  6. Wow! Amazing Skippy is doing for the HNT and CN the same magic he worked at the APP. It is his disappearing reader trick. The Press was a respected award winning paper with good circulation numbers and when he left it was a joke with dwindling circulation. I would be interested to see if the Ledger and the Bergen Record had the same percentage of their readership disappear over the same time. Think he has his mentor Bob Collins on speed dial for advice on how to be a good boss.

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  7. 5/04/2009 12:38 PM said:
    They care only about protecting themselves and their jobs and their friends.When the flagrant abuses of company vehicles were exposed and then kept hush-hush last year, some people were targetted and others were not. The bad part is that one person who was targetted was not involved in the mess. But he was quietly fingerpointed and blamed by others in his department. (He was also named here.)

    Imagine working in that environment...when you're not part of the "club" but you think you are.

    The backstabbing internal politics at HNT are incredible. These people are literally eating each other for lunch every day.

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  8. 12:31 P.M. has hit the nail on the head! PG is a disgrace, as is JJC!
    If the reporters (or whatever they are calling them now) ran the paper, it would be a quality publication.

    12:38 P.M. The HNT has lost its focus, and the CN has lost the interest of the people of Somerset County.

    It is tiresome to be stopped by so many people who know where you work and then liten to a tirde about had awful the paper is-- and they are right!

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  9. 1:14 pm, I heard from some news source (radio maybe) that the Bergen Record actually increased their circulation. Not by much, but even flat these days is pretty spectacular.

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  10. How about circulation numbers for the APP, Courier Post and Vineland Daily Journal, please. thanks

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  11. 2:44, it's hard to say. The Record circ. figures have included Herald-News (somewhere in the 20s) for about six years now. So they are still down quite a bit from the good old days.

    Also, there are various (legal) tricks to inflate circ temporarily. Remember, the APP's circ went UP in the first ABC report under Gannett, despite shrinking the news hole and trimming the newsroom from 230 to 165 via attrition. A reader frenzy over the "Critters" section? I think not.

    If The Record is still up a year from now, I'll give credit where it's due, but right now I'm skeptical. The people running that newsroom are not exactly intellectual giants, either. In fact, I'd bet on Skippy against them in a fair fight, sad to say.

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  12. 2:26 PM: The HNT has lost the people that gave the paper its focus. They were all laid off by PG and the Skipster.

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  13. From what I hear on the street, there are people (plenty of 'em) who continue to read the CN and the HNT. For those of you who don't like change, too bad. PG is an innovative thinker and JJC just tells it like it is. Some people just can't take hearing the truth.
    We should all be pulling for the Regional Desk to be a success. Please stop your whining.

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  14. Maybe the circulation drop is due to the fact that we had a circulation dept that didn't care if the papers got out or not. MK and JS can't do everything! Circulation issues weren't addressed.

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  15. Backstabbing at the HNT? Which department?

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  16. 10:59, I'd tell you, but I can't sit in this chair any longer with the knife handle in the way.

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  17. It would be nice if JS was actually doing something other than stirring up stuff. She is such a trouble maker.

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