Chicago Tribune eliminates Bears game stories

You must not follow what Frank Ridgway has written- papers are not suppose to care what readers think.

 

Content-wise, I think papers like The Washington Post, The New York Times and the L.A. Times couldn't do much better. Ditto many papers in medium and small markets.

The reporting is excellent, the writing is fantastic... news is broken, meaningful issues are raised... honestly-- the content is top-notch.

So why are they all losing readers?

Saying, "Do better with the status quo!" just doesn't seem to be working.

Experiments are going to have to be conducted. Some will fail... but there's no way the folks in charge are going to say, "let's just improve the writing, do better art and call it a day..." ... when the reality is-- the writing is already pretty damn good.

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I'm with Ace. I love notebooks. I think more inside information-- more "tidbits" if you will-- is one way to draw.

The problem comes in when you have something juicy-- do you post it online or "save the news" for the print edition?

 

Well, my guess is that your experiences have been with one of those places where they do things like that.

And the best thing I can do is count my blessings that I'm somewhere that it isn't.

Yet, it's difficult to accept your outlook that is so black-and-white. There's SO much grey in this issue. You don't throw the designers out the door because your copy editors have let you down.

And you cannot prove to me that if you did, those copy editors would spend X amount of extra hours on fact-checking.

 

Papers are losing readers because they are trying to play to other media's strengths. Analogously, it's like a boat trying to be an airplane.

 

Really? I don't see those papers I mentioned doing much of that. There has been some fantastic international reporting from Iraq this year... the stuff on NSA domestic spying in the Times was fantastic investigative reporting... multi-part series out the butt... superior election coverage... some great sports columns on things like Andre Agassi's retirement...

I don't see much "trying to be TV" in papers like the NY Times or The Washington Post...

 

Well, there are about 1,700 dailies besides them, and many have gone McPaper in lots of ways, or tried to dumb down. The Tribune clearly went to the dumb-down, thinking only pretty pictures and quick hits are needed, not one of those well-written gamers.

And the NYT has gained circulation. So it supports my point, that more papers like that one and a few others should care about the stories and not try gimmicks.

 

But the NY Post gained more...

But Dools... your point is well-taken... I just don't think sprucing up already solid content is enough...

 

The Post also priced themselves to the point they're probably nothing more than a Murdoch tax writeoff.

 

I think the Times and the Post had a quarter or something where they put a tourniquet on the bleeding. We all know it's probably not enough. Hey -- if it makes everybody feel better, TV is losing viewers and advertising to the internet, too.

I guess my point is, you can all shout for better content, but don't be so hard on yourselves... The content is pretty good from where I sit.

 

Luggie, it's not really about the NYT, the WaPo, the ChiTrib, the LAT, etc. Their content quality is high, and always has been.

Like Dools said, the problem lies with the 1,500 much smaller papers in the country that aren't writing NSA spying stories, national election coverage, BALCO investigative reports, etc.

The rest of us are the ones that can't afford to "dumb down" our content in favor of gimmicks that do not work.

 

It goes a little beyond copy editors, though.

Sometimes the prettiest design can convey the wrong message.

Case in point: Every year we preview the big Masters Series and WTA tennis tournament on Key Biscayne. The cover subject this year was Roger Federer and his artistry.

Photo editor selects a striking overhead image of Federer serving, and casting a long shadow that stretched the length of the photo.

The problem? The surface was red clay that bascially dominated the photo . . . and the Key Biscayne tournament is played on a green hard court.

To a tennis buff like me, that cover scremed "French Open Preview", inappropriate for this particular section previewing this particular tournament. "Does this bother anyone else?" I asked.

The supervisors polled were split. Visual people tended to like the original idea ("it's cool image"), while the content-driven people tended to be bothered by it. After going back and forth for a couple of days, the content group won and a different photo was chosen.

But it's a battle that's constantly being waged. And oftentimes the dye is cast before anyone even has a chance to say, "Does this bother anyone else?"

 

That's not what I wrote. I wrote that they shouldn't care what you think because you are atypical. I would not think that our target market is semi-literates with an obsessive-compulsive disorder that leads them to post 10,000 times apiece on a message board for an occupation of which they do not belong. I think smart editors would value your input the same as any other clearly insane person's: "Thank you for writing, sir. We will look into whether the people in the photographs we publish can see you when you open our newspaper." As always, we consider the source when a complaint or criticism comes our way, and we throw out those that come from mental patients.