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Sunday, May 19, 2013
31 comments:
Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."
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A look at the old Miami Herald building after layoffs: http://www.barefootmailman.org/one-herald-plaza/
ReplyDeleteVery sad. Somebody needs to document the newspaper industry's demise. Future generations will find it hard to imagine such a thing actually existed.
DeleteLike coin-operated phones, cigarette vending machines and people writing out checks at the grocery store, newspapers as we know them will live on in the movies and television . . . and in our memories. Curiosities, anachronisms.
DeleteAnd if one more person writes out a check for groceries - in MY LINE - I will follow that person out to the car and . . .
Anon@220P: Maybe you better take a course in fact-checking. That building has been sold and will be knocked down to be replaced by a luxury high-rise.
DeleteThe Herald has moved its office and newsroom to its printing plant near the Miami airport.
The Asbury Park Press has basically hired every re tread from supermedia and we have seen a few good folks leave the company in the past month and a half. Now they announce the community reporters are done. This place is a zoo.
ReplyDeleteWhatever happened to Tom Regan in corporate HR? He still there?
ReplyDeleteSo, what is the news on weeklies?
DeleteThe weekly that I was once employed by is a shadow of it's former self.
The content is terrible,the layout is bad and more house filler than ads.
I guess that's what has happened all across the Gannett country.Layoff half of the staff and what is left is just people who want to stay employed and have no pride in the work.I can't see anything but more layoffs when revenues are down 50%.
Here's a question for all you Reno people. What's the story on Brryl Love, the new gannett guru now running Usa Today's Hub?
ReplyDeleteTranslation: "who wants to be the first to trash the guy? Haters paradise
DeleteGee, sorry I asked.
DeleteReno person here. Answer: No idea. The dude never addressed me eye-to-eye the whole time he or I was there (unlike his predecessors).
DeleteIf newspapers are going away or dying as some on here suggest then who are the people that continue to buy newspapers at stores or get home delivery. While I do know that circulation has fallen since the glory days why are there still millions of people who continue to pay for the service. Can't they can get most information for free on the internet? Even after prices are raised and service declines they stay and never question why.
ReplyDeleteNo they don't. Many have left and those that have not are lifers. The reason papers are dying is that the younger consumers (not boomers) do not need papers and will not use them.
DeleteHeh 12:50 let me paraphrase your first line, "if horses are going away because if the horseless carriage ......?"
DeleteReally, do you believe that greedy owners killed the newspaper?
4:28 Really not a very god comparison. If you have a newspaper and you have a digital newspaper most people will still read the paper version if it is available.
DeleteI agree, they said radio was going away when the TV came but it's still here. Newspapers will always have a niche but with fewer people involved in running it. Circulation and advertising is down and I mean way down. Less reporters needed, less management, less production. Bottom line is the 30% profit may now only be 15%. There is just to much competition and no one can afford to price themselves out. Advertisers will go where they are getting the most bang for their buck. It's very hard to believe that Gannetts governing board can still draw those types of salaries why the little girls and boys suffer at the bottom. Only my opinion.
ReplyDeleteIt's strange that newspapers blame the declining readership on everything but themselves. They say the internet for instant news. Well...isn't that the same thing they said about radio, then TV? News at 6, then at 11. Papers still flourished. They still would. People still would buy the paper if it did it's original job, at a reasonable price. They would still have advertisers if they didn't price those out of existence also.
ReplyDeleteNewspapers...like the child in the burnt out room holding the matches saying I didn't do it. Right.
It's not the company that abandoned newspapers, it's the advertisers. This isn't the chicken or the egg riddle. Pick the three newspapers you respect most in this country and compare their advertising revenues today to their advertising revenues five years ago. In the toilet, no comparison. Advertisers always paid the bills. They found a shiny new penny. You hate Gannett, ok. NYT? Check. WSJ? Check. LAT? Check. WP? Check. Each one of those have had massive layoffs. Advertisers left and never came back. Pre prints gone, Legals gone one day soon, National Advertisers, running like rats on a ship. Real Estate, nuff said. Yes young readers want tech but they didnt kill the newspaper business, they just refused to give us CPR. Nope, the advertiser pretends you click on that online ad. They can't even get that right.
DeleteBeautiful post. Exactly on target. Can anyone can show me a "print" newspaper that is thriving with advertising? I dare anyone here to give just one example. One.
DeleteWhat's unfortunate is that the decline in advertising isn't entirely secular: It's cyclical as well. Sooner or later, the economy will pick up, as will advertising, albeit not as strongly as before. And many of the new crop of VPs will take credit for that pickup, which would have happened anyway.
DeleteIt is pointless to talk about ad revenue. Gannett has shown even in the best of times that they are not a good company to work for.
Delete1:00 AM - No. It is important to keep reminding those who foolishly refuse to accept reality that Gannett management is not responsible for the obsolescence of newspapers, and that on balance, thanks to said management, Gannett has fared far better than other newspaper companies — notwithstanding the endless bellyaching on this site.
Delete8:29 Nice to see you can give yourself a pat on the back for everything that was going to happen anyway. All management had to do was get out of it's own way and the company may have been even higher today but I know there are those of you on here that except mediocre results. Look while NY times and Wall Street Journal have also had layoffs they have both done a better job of running their newspapers.
DeleteI agree with much that's said here, but I think it's wrong to point to radio as defying the odds. Radio is a thin shell of what it once was. And television, well television is also feeling the ground give way. What's next? Damned if I know.
ReplyDeleteI din't know what your animus is toward radio, but radio is NOT a "thin shell of itself". From the Radio Advertising Bureau:
Delete2010 radio ad revenue: $16.1 billion
2011 radio ad revenue: $16.2 billion
2012 radio ad revenue: $16.4 billion
Radio has survived and thrived by reinventing itself every couple decades. 1940s and 50s were dominated by live programming. 1960s and 70s brought an explosion of popular music. The mid-80s ushered in the news-talk era. All FREE to the listener.
What has the newspaper industry done differently? Color photos. Smaller product. Price increases.
US newspaper ad revenue in selected years. NAA statistics.
2003: $44 billion
2008: $37 billion
2012: $19 billion
There is a media industry that is becoming a shadow of itself, but it ain't radio.
I too am wondering about the weeklies. It's like they don't exist. In the area where I once worked, their circulation, as I heard it, was as much as the daily's, yet the powers that be never gave them much thought. I wonder how long they will last as well and whether they'll be the first to go when things get really bad. Truly the red-headed stepchildren.
ReplyDeleteThe president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press on Sunday called the government's secret seizure of two months of reporters' phone records "unconstitutional" and said the news cooperative had not ruled out legal action against the Justice Department ...
ReplyDeletePruitt said the seizure has made sources less willing to talk to journalists and could limit Americans' information from all news outlets.
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