Can papers survive when competitors fall

Indeed. And hard to imagine the Morning News going anywhere. The Tribune, I don't know. Doesn't seem to be one of those markets that you hear much about though, which is probably to its benefit.

 

They should survive and thrive. They usually jack up the ad prices and companies have no choice but to play along.

Unfortunately what usually happens is they start cutting staff and stop spending money because when they have no competition, they tend to get complacent. It's one of the reasons why I always thought the three South Florida papers were all so good, because they had to rise to their competition. Same thing in Denver before the JOA.

 

I worked at a paper where the competitor was having financial problems and they started traveling less as a result. Within a few weeks, the bean counters at our paper noticed we were traveling two more people each week for NFL games and we cut that number to what they were doing. At one point both papers were doing a special section each week and when they stopped, we stopped a few weeks later.

Good competition really brings out the best in a paper. Unfortunately, there are so few markets where that still exists.

 

I haven't heard of any layoffs at the Trib. The D-News laid off a good number a while back, but still have a bigger newsroom than the Trib.