  Lilpup Member Username: Lilpup Post Number: 5419 Registered: 06-2004 |
Announced to day - the Ann Arbor News will be closing in July and replaced with a web-based media company. There will also e cutbacks at the Flint Journal, Saginaw News, and Bay City Times. More jobs gone from the ones who need them most - carriers, drivers, et. al. (sometimes this feels like it's approaching the 'just shoot me now' stage) http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/major_changes_for_booth_newspa.html (Message edited by lilpup on March 23, 2009) | ||
Iheartthed Member Username: Iheartthed Post Number: 3873 Registered: 04-2006 |
That's not a big surprise. I'd be surprised if any small local paper makes it to 2010. | ||
Lilpup Member Username: Lilpup Post Number: 5420 Registered: 06-2004 |
Losing the papers (and the revenue they generated, even just as convenience offers to get people to go into stores) is one thing, but I'm just not seeing any prospects for replacement jobs in this economy. So many jobs are disappearing so fast and there's no way 'green' jobs will fill the void. | ||
Thefishwrap Member Username: Thefishwrap Post Number: 25 Registered: 11-2008 |
"That's not a big surprise. I'd be surprised if any small local paper makes it to 2010." I think small local papers are the best to survive this. It's the large, metro dailies that are failing hard. | ||
Realitycheck Member Username: Realitycheck Post Number: 369 Registered: 08-2004 |
I agree with our forum colleague ^ who adopts a quaint bit o' slang for newsprint as his screen name. Hope that usage will make it to 2010 and beyond. | ||
Iheartthed Member Username: Iheartthed Post Number: 3874 Registered: 04-2006 |
quote: Not if advertising revenues keep falling through the floor. The newspapers, like the auto industry, were in trouble regardless of state of the economy. The economy just pushed up the judgment day by a few months. The little papers will fall because they don't have the audience to compete with the larger names once everything goes digital. It's become too cost prohibitive to produce and distribute a newspaper. The large metro dailies will probably eventually fall into a mix of niche reporting and expanded local coverage (i.e. the Freep and News might begin to do more coverage in satellite cities such as Ann Arbor, Flint, Saginaw, etc.). Someone proposed on the Chris Matthews Show yesterday that maybe we would see an emergence of something like the Washington Post being the main Washington Bureau for all papers to get information from Capitol Hill. So in this case, the Detroit dailies would be the Automotive Bureau for all papers in the country. | ||
Lilpup Member Username: Lilpup Post Number: 5421 Registered: 06-2004 |
^^and that kind of consolidation is dangerous, imho The media groups - papers, tv, radio, maybe even some web-based, need to be broken up. They have gotten far too large and uni-sourced. | ||
Servite76 Member Username: Servite76 Post Number: 163 Registered: 02-2008 |
quote: "I think small local papers are the best to survive this. It's the large, metro dailies that are failing hard" These papers are barely staying in business. Papers like the Tribune, Oakland Press and Macomb Daily whose parent company The Journal Register recently filed for bankruptcy, have about a 2 week supply of newsprint and can go under at any time. I wish the best to those employee's of The Ann Arbor News. | ||
Det_ard Member Username: Det_ard Post Number: 55 Registered: 02-2009 |
quote:The problem with that is that they lose efficiencies of scale so their costs go up. Then the cutbacks and closings accelerate. More and more former paying customers now get their news for free online. The producers of original news content need to make the free riders pay. Advertising alone isn't enough for a successful news business. Either people need to pay for original unique reporting or the reporting needs to stop happening. | ||
Sciencefair Member Username: Sciencefair Post Number: 155 Registered: 10-2007 |
I'd like to add that I know a number of Ann Arbor residences who cancelled their subscriptions to the AA News a year or two ago because of the lackluster content in recent years. I guess the economy was the final nail in the coffin. | ||
Iheartthed Member Username: Iheartthed Post Number: 3875 Registered: 04-2006 |
quote: Agreed. Which is where these online papers like Huffington Post and Drudge Report come in to play. HuffPo has already started moving into localized reporting with their local Chicago news page. | ||
Pffft Member Username: Pffft Post Number: 1273 Registered: 12-2003 |
What localized reporting? HuffPost Chicago rips stuff from other publications and re-posts it as "their own." They are aggregators and couldn't possibly provide original content the way newspapers do. | ||
Iheartthed Member Username: Iheartthed Post Number: 3876 Registered: 04-2006 |
quote: Well, I know that. I'm just saying that this is the direction it is heading. There might come a point where they are not just an aggregator, but also provide original reports. Sort of like what freep.com and detnews.com are right now... Except that they will be profitable, lol. | ||
Lilpup Member Username: Lilpup Post Number: 5422 Registered: 06-2004 |
"The problem with that is that they lose efficiencies of scale so their costs go up." Until recently the media conglomerates had been making money hand over fist. None of it was re-invested or incorporated into forward thinking - it all went to top level fat cats and some to stockholders (the same is true of many industries that are consolidating, including pharma). Without re-investment into the company there is no future product, but at least with the media there isn't as substantial start up investment required. In the case of pharma, the autos, other production companies consider how many research jobs have been lost during these consolidations. How many more researchers and more R&D could be conducted for every million paid (and millions upon millions year after year) to the fat cats. How many tech advancements or future products or medical cures haven't been realized thanks to all those mansions and yachts? | ||
Pffft Member Username: Pffft Post Number: 1274 Registered: 12-2003 |
It's illogical to say that's the direction it's heading. They couldn't survive without the newspapers they feed off of -- for free. When those newspapers go out of business, the HuffPost no longer has a business model. lol! | ||
Novine Member Username: Novine Post Number: 1279 Registered: 07-2007 |
I wouldn't be too quick to write off local-focused web publications. There's been a couple of decent ones that have sprung up in the past couple of years. The Ann Arbor Chronicle seems to be the best of the pack: http://annarborchronicle.com/ http://farmingtonenterprise.wo rdpress.com/ I'm not sure how you classify publications like Metromode and Michigan Messenger: http://www.metromodemedia.com/ and http://michiganmessenger.com/ but they do generate their own content without having a companion print publication. | ||
Iheartthed Member Username: Iheartthed Post Number: 3877 Registered: 04-2006 |
quote: You completely disregarded what I said. They will begin as an aggregator, and then move on to do their own local reporting. It is much more efficient for advertisers, the people who pay the bills, to pay one large news source on a national scale than to pay smaller news sources for advertising in every market. | ||
Lilpup Member Username: Lilpup Post Number: 5423 Registered: 06-2004 |
Economies of scale don't make for a healthy informational market, contentwise. The public interest will not be well-served. | ||
Crystal Member Username: Crystal Post Number: 399 Registered: 05-2007 |
I wonder what will happen with Warm the Children? Our family has served as volunteer shoppers for a number of years, and the A2 News was WTC's local sponsor. | ||
Pffft Member Username: Pffft Post Number: 1275 Registered: 12-2003 |
I didn't disregard what you said, I just don't agree with it. You don't build your business as an aggregator and then years later, after the fact, "suddenly" become journalists. Just like TV and radio, they'd find themselves with a weak website and the readership would abandon them. | ||
Iheartthed Member Username: Iheartthed Post Number: 3879 Registered: 04-2006 |
quote: But HuffPo isn't even solely an aggregator now. They do already have journalists on staff and even had a correspondent at Obama's first address to the nation. | ||
Pffft Member Username: Pffft Post Number: 1276 Registered: 12-2003 |
HuffPost is mostly Hollywood wives blogging for free. The actual journalists posting are few and far between. I don't know anyone of any quality who will give their work away for free. | ||
Oldredfordette Member Username: Oldredfordette Post Number: 5986 Registered: 02-2004 |
I know two people who work for HuffPo,for money, and good money at that. | ||
Thefishwrap Member Username: Thefishwrap Post Number: 26 Registered: 11-2008 |
"These papers are barely staying in business. Papers like the Tribune, Oakland Press and Macomb Daily whose parent company The Journal Register recently filed for bankruptcy, have about a 2 week supply of newsprint and can go under at any time." True. But they are also newspapers run by large media conglomerates. I think there will be a retraction to smaller run facilities, and reducing the amount they print. Local weekly newspapers are about the only thing surviving these days (and by surviving of course, I mean hanging on). Everything that being shut down or moving to the web, are major metro dailies. What was the last weekly to go out of business? Or move to web only? Many have survived without paid subscription since day 1. | ||
Rhymeswithrawk Member Username: Rhymeswithrawk Post Number: 1824 Registered: 11-2005 |
I was shocked when I heard the news today. If Newhouse wanted to close its papers in Jackson or Flint, I wouldn't be surprised. But A2 is such a hip city filled with intelligensia. Maybe the thinking was that it could fold the A2 News because these readers would just go online to get their news and the low-income, low-education folk in Jackson and Flint would not. I dunno, but this is scary. If this can happen in a place like Ann Arbor, it's only a matter of time before people in cities like Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, etc. are without a real newspaper (no offense to the weekly shoppers, mind). | ||
Pffft Member Username: Pffft Post Number: 1277 Registered: 12-2003 |
Oldredfordette, Good for them. The majority blog for nothing so that a handful get a paycheck. Great business model. | ||
Iheartthed Member Username: Iheartthed Post Number: 3880 Registered: 04-2006 |
quote: Okay... but... the journalists get paid to write for Huffington Post. Some celebrity bloggers choose to write opinion pieces for the Huffington Post as well. It's much the same as someone writing an op-ed for the Detroit Free Press and also not being paid. I don't get what that has to do with whether or not HuffPo is a pure aggregator service? | ||
Pffft Member Username: Pffft Post Number: 1278 Registered: 12-2003 |
All journalists on HuffPost get paid? Are you sure? Not everybody whose copy is on HuffPost has agreed to it. | ||
Bshea Member Username: Bshea Post Number: 73 Registered: 01-2009 |
http://www.crainsdetroit.com/a rticle/20090323/FREE/903239993 There are links in my story to both Mary Kramer's blog on this subject, and to a Q/A I did today with Steve Newhouse, a member of the family that owns Booth Newspapers. | ||
Iheartthed Member Username: Iheartthed Post Number: 3881 Registered: 04-2006 |
quote: Yes, all journalists on staff at the Huffington Post get paid. |
