We used to subscribe many moons ago to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, because it was a cheaper paper at the time. When the Examiner closed up shop, it was either take a local paper, or the LA Times, which I felt had some meat on it. We've been with the Times ever since, probably close to 20 years or so. The paper has been getting thinner and thinner over the past year or so and there isn't much meat left on it anymore
I'm not going to blame the Internet, but the reality is I can get local news, national and world news quickly and easily by reading it off of the Internet, either on my iPad or on my computer. I don't have to wait until tomorrow to learn that Van Cliburn passed away yesterday. I have come to the conclusion that having to shell out close to $10.00 per week to receive a paper copy of the newspaper is an exorbitant price that we just can't justify spending anymore. It doesn't make financial sense and my wife and I made the decision to finally pull the plug this week. The savings will pay for the iPad and then some in less than a year's time.
It was then I got the sales pitch. That's fine because it's what I expected. But you need to listen LA Times. When a customer says no, take that answer and run with it. Don't continue to beat a dead horse as all it's going to do is smell further down the road should that customer ever want to come back. Be gracious and accept the fact that you're a dying breed and unless you reinvent yourself, you're not going to be good for much of anything much longer.
So now I'll get my news via my iPad, probably like many other people are doing, including this guy who we saw on our walk along Olvera Street last month. Tuesday will be the last day we receive a copy of a newspaper.
I read this looking from two sides -- as a consumer and as a newspaper person. I've worked in newspapers most of my life (until I became a victim of the downsizing two years ago), so I'm torn on my thoughts when I hear people canceling subscriptions.
ReplyDeleteI'm a person who still wants to and needs to feel a newspaper. I love to read it in the morning. Alas, I understand the point about getting the news elsewhere. and the customer service. In the past few months, I think I can easily go into double digits for the amount of days our local newspaper either hasn't been delivered or had arrived amazingly late. When calling customer service, there's rarely a satisfactory answer. From reports I've seen, the print run for the paper has gone down several thousand in the two years since I got let go. In that time, more layoffs have happened and it's obvious with the quality and how thin things have gotten. It's a shame. I don't talk to many people still there (for obvious reasons), but the few I speak with have said what the moral is like.
With that in mind, I see your point of everything. Especially for the amount one pays.
At the same time, I continue to think about the dying industry. Everything is online. Think about this -- kids who are 2-3 years old now may never realize what a newspaper fully is. That makes me sad. I still love the feel, the smell. Whenever I still get a chance to write for somebody, I still get a rush with a byline. It's a great profession, alas, it's going by way of many other things. And that's a shame.
Newspapers can't reinvent themselves. They are what they are. If every newspaper goes mainly online, more and more will shut down. Because who needs thousands of online news sites telling you when some old Hollywood star died? The main problem is the fact that many bigwigs are still trying to find a way to make a 20% profit (like years ago) -- and that isn't happening. That's the main issue.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. I enjoyed your post today and understand your side, for sure. It just makes me sad that it's come to this point.
I've put off responding to this for a while, as it is on the edges of an important topic, and it deserves careful consideration. Due to the space limits, I've cut out a lot of what I had originally written, but this will still need to be run in two parts: sorry 'bout that.
ReplyDeleteWe stopped taking a paper newspaper years ago. I took the electronic version of the local paper for a couple of years, but it was awkward to use. I do get a daily version of the NYTimes, slimmed down to National and International coverage. And I regularly peruse some other "traditional" on-line sources: the local paper, the Guardian, CNN, and a few others on occasion.
I have worked for both the LATimes and the Ventura County Star (the local paper) in a couple of its versions. I've done mock-up work, in the days before computer set-up. I have worked as a motor route carrier, then a distribution supervisor, in Customer Service and in Sales. While I have no experience in reporting, editing or anything else that determines what actually goes into a newspaper, I've done work in a lot of what goes on after the editors sign off on the pages.
I used to hate to see stop-delivery orders, either as a carrier or as a Supervisor, but people lose interest in the world, they lose work and can't afford a daily paper, they can't handle all the waste, whatever. Let us be honest: even with the increased use of recycled paper, the enormous amount of paper that is used *EVERY DAY* by newspapers around the world is ridiculous. At the Star, I worked inside the same building with the printing presses. I could watch the press operators at work. I saw the waste from every day's run. Sure, all that waste was recycled, but it takes energy to recycle.
One thing that very rarely comes up in discussions on this topic is the fact that subscription rates barely cover the actual cost of delivering the paper once it gets off the presses. It has been that way for a century or more. Advertising is what pays for reporters, photographers, editors, office staff, janitorial services, newsprint, the press crew... Print advertising has been declining for over 30 years. Newspapers generally depend upon local stores and services, with a few larger ads from national chains. And there is no question that the last seven or eight years have destroyed a number of small businesses (and a few big ones), which has caused ad income to decline. Papers are smaller due to lack of ads: not just the number and size of them, but the amount of money they bring in. Ad rates have dropped over the past few years, in comparison to the rise of other costs, but advertisers have not been willing, or able, to take advantage of this.
I never thought that I would ever like to read any book on my iPad Touch. But a year ago, I stumbled across a magazine (Fantasy and Science Fiction) that offered each issue, formatted for the Touch, for 99 cents. OK, I used to read the print version years ago, so I had to try this out: it was too cheap not to. And I quickly came to love it. No ads, either :-) I can read it in a waiting room, while in a long line, while waiting for my food at a restaurant (if I'm alone), almost anywhere. I may forget my cell phone, but I never leave home without my Touch. I liked this arrangement so much that I added a feed to The Economist (some very interesting stuff in that), and then decided to buy a couple of very old books which are currently out of print. The cost was minimal (a buck or so), and I'm enjoying the experience of having a book literally fit in one hand and still be easy to read with slowly decaying eyesight. And each book is one less thing crowding our already overcrowded bookshelves. And that after already giving away over 500 books to the local Friends of the Library for their used bookstore.
Which brings me to this: newspapers *can* re-invent themselves. Sorry, P.J, but I just plain disagree with you on this. Newspapers already *have* begun to re-invent themselves, of necessity. The question is not, "Can they?" It is, "Can they do it quickly enough, and still be pertinent?" The NYT, which is in no current danger of collapsing, basically gives away ten on-line articles a month; after that, one has to pay either a flat monthly fee (a few bucks) for unlimited articles, or a very small fee for just one. It works for me. It's the same basic idea that allows an iPad user to decide if they are going to pay for a yearly contract for 3G/4G, or opt to buy a certain amount of bandwidth on a monthly basis.
ReplyDeleteGranted, newspapers are very temporary things and can't use the exact same models, but they *can* adapt themselves to the format (and the format to their mission), and survive. Most rational people (an oxymoron? One has to wonder...) still want to get their news from a reputable source. Most on-line sources are not all that reputable, but people use them because they are convenient. And they are willing to "pay" for them, at least by letting themselves be bombarded by banner ads and such. Newspapers have, in general, resisted this, for reasons which I cannot *begin* to fathom. It is a model that works, so they might as well use it. Your comment about bigwigs and profit is quite apt.
Let us consider one more thing. Newspapers have re-invented themselves several times. Back in Victorian times, newspapers regularly carried stories, often as serials. Charles Dickens used the format for almost everything he wrote. Newspapers, which used to be a major source for fiction, could try it again. It will work; there are many aspiring writers out there; some of them would be thrilled to get anything of theirs printed, for almost nothing, just because they would have some sort of immediate audience, which is not always true of digital ink publishers. Newspapers had this market for decades, but let it get away from them, just as they let comic strips get away from them. Advertisers flock to where they know people will see their ads. Give people a reason to pay a few cents a day.
For years, newspapers worried that radio was going to kill them. Then radio worried about TV, just as the movies did. Movies were going to kill the stage. CDs were going to destroy records, and then MP3s were going to destroy CDs. "Video Killed the Radio Star." The last I looked, The Great White Way is still going strong, the radio dial is more crowded than ever (there is no mass medium less permanent than radio), cable TV stations are added almost daily, books are still being printed and bookstores are not lacking for customers, magazine racks are fuller than ever, CDs and even vinyl records are being produced...
I've more than made my point. I expect newspapers to still be going when I shuffle off this mortal coil, but I don't expect them to be what they were when I was a kid. I don't know what things they will do to survive, but they will survive. A lot of the jobs for which Journalism Majors compete might be gone, re-purposed, re-imagined. Editors, in general, haven't done any real editing in decades, as a look through any bit of mass media will attest, so they will certainly be doing something different as their positions transmute. It just might be that what people really want from their newspapers is *NEWS*, not all the nonsense that so often passes for it. Opinion is fine in its place, but that should be only two or three pages, out of the 40-60 or so of an average daily, or one minute or so out of a 30-minute news broadcast. And I'm not talking merely about Fox News or MSNBC. If papers would stick to reporting facts, they just might regain their appeal, and their customer base.
Finally catching up on your blog after being away. Having been a computer professional most of my working life either as a teacher or researcher, I find I miss the serendipity I can get from the printed versions of the paper that I can not get with the electronic editions, hence I still buy a daily paper.
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