A newspaper that is saving money without cutting jobs

Kinda sad to see this in Bakersfield. (Well really anywhere really)

Just that Bakersfield some 20+ years ago was responsible for setting off a national media debate on issues of privacy/emotions and photography/editorial decisions with a photo by John Harte, initially run in the Californian and then sent over the AP Wire.

Still one of the most powerful photos I have ever seen, and I've seen plenty in my day.

 

I live in a market where The Washington Post is the main large daily. That's why I used that as an example. The area has that, The Washington Times and The Baltimore Sun, and that's just the big boys.

There's also free dailies and a weekly paper that gets slapped on every driveway (which is my shop's direct competition). Makes no sense for my paper to try to get the world outside my state or county, unless there's some direct tie in with my county.

 

You shouldn't in this circumstance. The Washington media market is not comparable to the Bakersfield media market and what's true for the former is not necessarily true for the latter.

 

Our paper (actually, the whole chain, I think) ditched Canadian Press (basically our AP, and with access to AP stuff). Saved a bundle, obviously.

Sadly, we often are forced to run Sportsticker stuff... which is just so beyond execrable. Seriously, it's barely in English. I mean, who are they hiring?

 

What about photos? What's the art going to be on Super Bowl Monday?

 

Every year, the AP gets cancellation notices, and there don't seem to be any cancellations. In most states, its state coverage is terrible, no detail, no response to member needs. The arrogance is amazing. The AP always knows your business better than you do.

In the days when there were other wire services (UPI, and before that, UP and INS), things were different. But publishers got too comfy with AP, and editors with APME, and started spending lots of money on supplemental services like NYT, Post-LAT, Knight, etc. So when it came time to cut, it was UPI (rather than the prestige supplementals) that got cut. That's one reason why AP has become even more impossible to deal with.

But while the AP is expensive, despite your circulation, you can't get the same amount of material, news and photo, elsewhere, unless, as Hoosier says Bakersfield seems to be planning to do (and I don't believe a word of it), you steal it. So when it comes down to the nut-cutting, publishers never cut.

What Bakersfield and other disgruntled AP members ought to do is what editors in Ohio are trying to work out: First, raise hell with the AP at every opportunity, second, set up your own cooperative, exchanging state news. When an AP executive suspects you might be doing that, attention gets paid.

But grandiose cancellation notices are not worth the postage, because it just doesn't happen, and the AP knows that the odds are you will still be with them for years to come.

 

Fans watching in the bar...

 

Maybe, maybe not.

Bakersfield is less than 2 hours from LA, though. There is a lot of pro sports happening right near Bakersfield.

It's not like it is in Montana, where there are no pro sports teams.

Plus, Bakersfield is a good size city.

In some ways, I'm sad this is happening, in others I'm quite intrigued and curious as to how it will work.

The other thing I'm interested in is this: Everyone is jumping all over Bako (part of which is because one of the staffers posts here) but no one is jumping on the Spokesman-Review, which is a good-sized paper in its own right.

 

the spokesman is a 90k. bakersfield rolls in at 60k.

 

I was being totally sarcastic earlier, BTW. Of course you need wire copy.

 

Personally, I've seen AP fucking up to the point where it's very frustrating. Yet, they do manage to produce. I know it's getting to be a cost-conscious decision for many publishers but there is a need for AP. The AP, in turn, must improve it's coverage.

 

http://www.minnpost.com/davidbrauer/2008/08/26/3130/strib_tells_ap_were_canceling

I think you're going to see an absolute snowball of papers cancelling AP now.