Changes at the Hartford Courant

Agreed.
But the Trib's suits fear the online lynch mob more than they fear people canceling their subscriptions.
I really think knuckleheads like Jeff Jarvis are destroying papers with the hope they can get some of the fallout advertising cash for their goddam blogs.
The people who bitch most about papers trying to charge for content are the ones who have the most to gain when more and more papers fail.
It really is that simple.

 

Seriously, all you ever hear when people talk about charging for the web version of the papers is "It will wreck our on-line audience! It will drive them elsewhere!"

Well, you're no making any fucking money from them AT ALL compared to the print ad dollars you're bleeding. Plus you're giving away the product for free, thus devaluing it every single day as more old people die, more middle age people feel comfortable reading it on-line, and more young people ignore it entirely.

Make your content valuable. Indispensable. Maybe then people will actually want to pay for it. Right now, the business model is stupid.

We're going to make the product you pay for worse and charge more for it, but also offer it for free! Please buy it anyway!

 

But if you generate unique content, that people can't get elsewhere, they have no other online place to go.
That's why the idea of people fleeing to some other site is beyond absurd.
I've always thought that giving the paper away for free on the internet was incredibly stupid.
Anything else I say is just signing to the choir.

 

*Shaking head*

( ... my apologies for not adding more. You guys have summarized it well for Hartford and the industry as a whole. Kudos to BYH for napalming the beancounters, suits and any other idiots associated with the stupidity.)

 

It is stupid. It's also too late to change it. Why? Because outside of The Wall Street Journal, no newspaper produces indispensable content. It's too easy to get EVERYTHING everywhere else.

I worked for a newspaper for two decades. I now live in a city that has two really good metro newspapers. I subscribe to neither. I tried, but more often than not they just went to the recycle bin. Why? Because, as it turned out, they're the same formula-driven crap that journalists defend as "the way people want it." Formula-driven page design; formula-driven coverage decisions; precede-gamer-folo-column-precede-gamer-folo-column-lather-rinse-repeat. Trying too hard to be the "paper of record." Not worth my getting up 30 minutes earlier. I'm now one of those people who don't have time to read the paper.

And don't forget: The "people don't have time to read the newspaper" issue predates the internet. I was hearing it to explain circulation decreases back in 1988. This train was coming, free web or no. The free web just accelerated things a bit.

Here's the other thing, newsroom: It's not just about you. Why did my wife read the paper at all? The classifieds. Where are the classifieds? Elsewhere, for free, and way easier to navigate than on paper.

But redesigns and resectioning aren't the answers for saving the readers that still exist. The only answer is better stories they can't get anywhere else. Not being the "paper of record."

 

Whenever the "bright new plan" has more to do with streamlining the print product than how they're going to transition to and, yes, grow the product in the online world, it's really only about cost cutting for the shareholders. The print product is a cash cow at this point. There are still good but diminishing returns, so you keep it but don't focus resources there. Increasing the depth of local coverage online is the only editorial path worthy of pursuit (unless you're a Top 10).

 

I no longer feel like such an ass for only reading the newspaper online. I still subscribe but most days it never makes it off the porch before I've read the whole sports section/news front.

 

I'm hearing that there likely will be more layoffs there soon.

 

I am SO looking forward to the day I cancel the local rag. I'd do it now, but I need some piddly-ass part of it on a semi-daily basis for my work and thus can write off the subscription for tax purposes. And, I'll be honest, I'm in the cup of joe/newspaper morning habit.

 

Hartford Courant is run by some damn good people, sports-wise. I wouldn't sell them short. They might over come this ME.