Josh Marshall feels bad about all the cuts in newspapers. Which is a dangerous thing to express in public, as angry curmudgeons tend to descend in swarms, likely blaming Marshall for their plight … while surreptitiously banging in copies of their resume & writing samples…
In a sense we’re part of this question, since we’re on the other
side of the divide. But in journalism as in life, no one is an island.
And while I’m confident ‘journalism’ will survive this in the medium
run, there’s no getting around the catastrophic dimensions of what’s
happening for a whole generation of journalists. There’s a lot I don’t
know about newspaper financing. But the year over year revenue declines
across the whole industry just seem unsustainable.
No kidding. We used to joke that if the circulation numbers kept up, in 20 years time, there would be only one reader of the LA Times, “but he’ll have a really great newspaper that’s fine-tuned to his interests.” We’re not laughing anymore about that one.
I hadn’t heard that the Scripps chain is thinking about killing the Rocky Mountain News “as soon as practical.”
Cincinnati-based Scripps said in a news release that if no acceptable
offers emerge by mid-January, it will “examine its other options.” It
gave no details.An internal Denver Post memo, authored by
publisher Dean Singleton, read in part, “an announced sale is usually
the first step leading to a failing newspaper’s closure.”(snip)
Boehne says the problem is not getting people to read the paper, it’s that the advertising dollars that aren’t there anymore.
“In
the last couple of years it’s gotten tougher. Classified ads have moved
from our pages onto our Web site. We still have the classifieds, but
it’s not as profitable on the Internet as it is in print,” he said.