'Are Newspapers Dying?' Thread

[The Baron]

Circulation Is Still Declining

[Captain Comics]

I used to work for McClatchy (RIP). I used to work for Gannett as well, which referred to newspapers as "profit centers."

[the_original_b_dog]

Yeah, that WaPo article the Baron linked to described the Akron Beacon Journal. I went to college about four hours from Akron, and one day my j-professor stumped the class by asking, "What's the best newspaper in Ohio?" People guessed The Plain Dealer and the Cincinnati Enquirer before he said, no, it was the Beacon Journal. I'm not even sure I could name Akron's paper back then. But that was back in the Knight-Ridder days, when they set the gold standard for community newspapers. They had Akron, Detroit -- Miami, I think. A lot of the papers that became McClatchy. But now Akron is a Gannett "profit center," and I can't remember the last time anyone spoke of it well. 

[ClarkKent_DC]

I used to work for a Tribune paper. If you want to understand the experience, watch Season 5 of The Wire. There is more truth in that show than most people will ever understand. 

[ClarkKent_DC]

The alternative weekly Washington City Paper is killing its print edition and cutting five people from its staff.

It actually dropped from weekly to monthly in 2020, because, y'know, COVID. 

Washington City Paper was a spinoff from Baltimore's City Paper, which began in 1977 as an alternative weekly started by two Johns Hopkins University students and was killed entirely in 2017 by the Baltimore Sun.

(And yes, there is something very wrong with the idea that the mainstream press winds up owning its alt-weekly critic and rival).

P.S.: After the shocking news that one of the casualties of the Washington City Paper's print demise was longtime photographer Darrow Montgomery, they figured out a way to keep him on board. Cutting him was like cutting Walter Cronkite from CBS News; he was THE face of the enterprise.

[ClarkKent_DC]

Magazines aren't faring better, either. As noted elsewhere, Entertainment Weekly killed its print edition in February. Word now is that the print version of sister publication Martha Stewart Living is also going away, and parent company DotDash Meredith has also axed the print editions of EatingWell, Health, InStyle, Parents and People en Español. 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I got a postcard from Entertainment Weekly to the effect that it was ceasing publications. I have rarely found EW useful, but Tracy has repeatedly assured me (because I keep repeatedly asking) that we were getting it at no cost somehow. The notice said said my subscription would be transferred to People (which I don't necessarily want, either) "under the same terms." 

[ClarkKent_DC]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

I got a postcard from Entertainment Weekly to the effect that it was ceasing publications. I have rarely found EW useful, but Tracy has repeatedly assured me (because I keep repeatedly asking) that we were getting it at no cost somehow. 

I forget when we started getting Entertainment Not Even Monthly Any More, but I recall at one point, I deliberately let the subscription lapse ... and we got letters and postcards for months pleading for us to come back, dropping the per-issue cost to insanely low levels. I think we were paying something like 49 cents per issue, which is about a 93 percent discount from the $6.99 cover price.

Jeff of Earth-J said:

The notice said said my subscription would be transferred to People (which I don't necessarily want, either) "under the same terms." 

We got that same offer, but we don't want it.

[the_original_b_dog]

Inflating circulation numbers, no matter the cost, to make them appear bigger to advertisers, is an age-old trick

[ClarkKent_DC]

USA Today got established off selling newspapers in bulk to hotels who offered it to travelers as a "free" perk with your room, which allowed it to claim it was the highest-circulation newspaper in America, even above The Wall Street Journal.

Eventually, the Audit Bureau of Circulation disallowed the practice unless the customer had the option to refuse it, so hotels had to list USA Today as a line item on the bill.

[ClarkKent_DC]

What's that saying ...? Once is an occurrence, twice is a pattern, thrice is a trend?

The alternative newspaper Philadelphia Weekly is killing its print edition.

Here's an editor's note explaining why: "FROM THE EDITOR: WE’RE ENDING PRINT. IT’S A GOOD THING." The startling statement within: 

As part of my decision making, I contacted several publishers and editors nationwide. The general consensus is that print is going away for all of us permanently within a decade or so.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"What's that saying ...? Once is an occurrence, twice is a pattern, thrice is a trend?"

I heard it this way: Goldfinger said, "Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action.'"

[The Baron]

I hope no one minds, but I changed the name of this thread, rather than be constantly reminded of a feeble attempt at humor that I made quite some time ago.