Monday, December 01, 2008
Shreveport drops daily section, weekly TV guide
Foreshadowing similar cuts at other newspapers, The Times of Shreveport, La., today switched to a three-section newspaper, and stopped publishing anonymous comments and blogs as a regular print feature, Executive Editor Alan English told readers in a new column. "While our diverse local economy, bolstered by oil and gas, helps insulate us, we are not immune to the impact of the financial meltdown and economic repercussions now showing on our Main Street,'' he said. "By the end of the year, the Times will have reduced its work force and expenses by 6%."
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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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The print feature of online comments and blogs was like Atlanta's vent maybe.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Shreveport, if they're cutting staff and expenses by 6% each, instead of the 10% each that everyone has been expecting, did they catch some kind of break from corporate? There's a big difference between 10% and 6%. Last week Indianapolis seemed to catch a break also. Are these papers favorites of some corporate guardian angel, or are they particularly profitable, or has this blog given corporate cold feet in moving fully ahead with their mass career-death sentencing of longtime, loyal, and supremely talented and knowledgeable people?
ReplyDeleteAnyone know?
Also, when English says Shreveport won't publish anonymous comments or blogs, my presumption is he means on the web site. Or have they been publishing large quantities of the anonymous kind of crap we get on our web site in the newspaper as well? If so, that would be an easy thing to cut -- most of it's just junk anyway. If he is talking about the web, then I wonder what this saves them? Are they cutting their online editor? Or a staff member who monitored the online comments?
Shreveport will also discontinue the TV Week pullout as part of its changes.
ReplyDeleteCould we see other Gannett papers drop their printed TV sections? The combined C-N/HNT website includes a (buried) link to Zap2It.
He means the print feature that took a few anonymous comments from the site to run in print -- to suggest people review the larger forums.
ReplyDeleteAs another blog said earlier today, the times website is unchanged. He is just talking about print versions.
The Courier-Post in Cherry Hill NJ introduced a dramatically reduced version of their TV booklet this past Sunday and told readers it was because of the economic climate.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I was wondering whether this referred to staff-written blogs or to blogs by community members for which the paper provides a home.
ReplyDeleteIf the latter, doesn't that kind of go against the idea of making the newspaper websites a community bulletin board?
Every Gannett site I've gone to recently greets you on the home page with "Comment, blog and share photos."
The article states it was a "print" feature. The blog headline buries the lead...the TV guide cut.
ReplyDeleteYes, Shreveport is the darling of the GANLA papers. Having dealt with them, I can't understand why though.
ReplyDeleteRe: the 10 percent figure...I've been under the impression, perhaps wrongly, that the total payroll reduction across the newspaper division has to be 10 percent, meaning that the percentage may vary by individual papers. In reading the original memo from Dickey and subsequent emails from my publisher and others on this blog, I haven't seen anything that says it is 10 percent at each site. Maybe it's a misunderstanding on my part, but that's been my interpretation.
ReplyDeleteRe: Shreveport...I'm in GANLA and can say they are definitely the darling of the Louisiana group. It's always "Shreveport's doing this" and "Shreveport's doing that" like it's the best paper ever. I go to its Web site pretty regularly and have seen the print version a few times...it's an okay paper, but nothing to write home about. Just decent. And the staff there, especially the managers, are super-snotty, at least in my experience.
Darling... It isn't about being sweet. Look at their profit numbers from Jim's report. It could be about what they are doing, but likely is about the $$$.
ReplyDeleteOil and gas insulates them? Have they looked at oil prices lately? Guess no one remembers what happened back in the 80s when oil cratered then, too.
ReplyDelete8:04, perhaps you should Google Haynesville Shale. Lots of new rich folks in north La. now.
ReplyDeleteLafayette, La.'s Daily Advertiser cut a section two days a week months ago. If you want to see a disgraceful excuse for a daily paper, check out theadvertiser.com. The sad part is it used to be a decent paper. Now, it's little to nothing. It never recovered from the great local initiative that overtook it with a fury a few years back.
ReplyDeleteLafayette did an incredible job covering the storms and helping people. The cuts are tough on everyone. Let's not devolve into critiques of papers when many good journalists face one of the toughest days of their lives. There will be more than enough time to bash. We all have good people pushing the buttons, fixing headlines and making the best of what we face. Let's just hold off on picking each other apart for a day or two at the risk of adding harm to people who will already be hurting. I don't work in Lafayette, but know good people who do.
ReplyDeleteI know all of the good journalists in Lafayette. The newsroom (and indeed the paper itself, spoken as someone outside of the newsroom) have been poisoned by one ineffectual individual who has been able to blow enough smoke to likely save her job. Unfortunatley, I suspect other, better, reliable people will pay the price.
ReplyDeleteI know of a paper near here who stopped the TV section last year...and quickly reinstated it a couple of weeks later. You stop putting that in the paper and you can cut your Sunday numbers by a third to a half I'd bet. Only more proof that newspaper companies DON'T WANT TO SELL papers anymore, and are doing there best to accomplish that goal.
ReplyDeletehave heard 22 positions being cut in Shreveport; word is, 8 are vacant.
ReplyDeleteFrom a non-Gannett paper, we discontinued our TV book a year ago and loss less then 3% of circulation related to the change. TV books are not profitable and not used by the general public. Some have gone to a paid TV book model for those subscribers that wish to pay for it. I support the publisher's decision to stop the publishing of the TV book. He must have heard about how successful it was at non-gannett papers.
ReplyDelete