Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville to publish three days a week

It's official, starting this fall the Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville newspapers will switch to only publishing print editions 3 days a week: Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

Publisher to the newsroom/company: "It's bold and it's scary...But the time is right. The time is now."

 

Ugh.

 

Here's the announcement: http://blog.al.com/al/2012/05/alabama_media_group_a_new_digi.html

 

At a quick glance, that looks exactly like the Times-Picayune press release story, with the word "Alabama" dropped in a few times.

Deliver award-winning local news and sports? They can't even post a local announcement of the changes!

 

Shit.

 

If I'm these papers, I find Warren Buffet's phone number and ask him to relieve Newhouse of its apparent burden.

I profess some ignorance as to how good of news-side papers these are. But in sports? Pretty damn good.

 

Pipeline says staffers will be required to reapply for positions with the new "media group."

Hate it for my friends at those papers.

 

We have reached close to the endpoint of this business model, to wit: if we just don't put out a product or have any employees, then surely all that remains will be profit. Newspaper employees don't deserve their fate, but as businesses, their bosses have made sure newspapers deserve to die unless Adam Smith was a liar.

 

I know college coverage is the bread and butter for these papers, but prep sports coverage is going to take a major hit. Will they just run all the Friday night football and basketball coverage in the Sunday paper, two days old? If they go to all features on preps, will mom and dad get pissed that their little hometown hero's game-winning TD isn't in the paper?

It surely should drive traffic to the web on Friday nights/Saturday mornings for people who want prep sports coverage. Will the company be able to monetize that? I'm guessing not. If anyone in this business knew how to monetize the web, they'd have done it by now.

 

The Alabama papers and the T-P are all under the same house, correct?

 

This is a fucking kick in the nuts. I'm sure this is like Ann Arbor, and only a stopgap until print is killed altogether. Huntsville gets a taste of that early, since they will print in Birmingham now.

If you will excuse me, I'm going to throw up.

 

Yes. Separate publishers, but all in the same company and can and do share content. The Alabama papers publishers recently was named publisher of the T-P.