Cuts in Madison, Wisconsin

I don't know if it pays its bills. But I do know that articles about the Packers and Patriots sure drive a lot more traffic than the review of last night's poetry slam.

I'm not mocking either department, but if you go on almost any major paper's site, the comments and traffic are flowing on the sports stories. Not so much on the other ones. I can't imagine what kind of ads something like Milwaukee's paper could place if they suddenly lost the Packers.

I saw Don Walker speak at an event years ago. He said stories about the Packers working out a backup long snapper would generate more hits than the top news story. You can make your own commentary about whether or not that's pathetic, but it is reality.

 

Yep.

Lots of readers. Lots of hits. No revenue. Bills not paid.

 

Well, there are ads. You don't get decent ads without hits. Without sports, I don't know how many people read that paper. I'm guessing fewer. I wouldn't go as far as saying it "pays the bills" but I would think it's paying more than most sections.

Sports also has a unique advantage in that it can sell bullshit things like "insider subscriptions" in areas that have a rabid following. It's something not every dept. can offer.

 

I did not say there were no ads. I said there was no revenue.

In other words, online ads don't pay shit.

Anyway, sucks for those let go, I thought Madison would be a place where the citizenry had an interest in sustaining a decent paper, but I don't see any reason to believe sports would have been more of a plus on the balance sheet than the other sections.

 

I am sure that the Packers drive a lot of traffic for the Milwaukee website. For example, my son who lives in Virginia and has been to eight foreign countries has been a Packers fan since age four. So he will go the website to check on the Packers and ignore articles about the Milwaukee city council elections. Why should he care about civic affairs in Milwaukee? He has never been to Wisconsin.

But is is hard for the Milwaukee paper to generate revenue from a hit by my son because newspaper advertisers tend to be local. Roundy's is a large Milwaukee supremarket chain but my son is irrevevant to them. So while a prominent sports team like the Packers or the Badgers will draw a lot of hits for the hometown paper they tend not to attract much ad revenue.

 

As someone who started his career at the State Journal while still a student at Wisconsin, these cuts make no sense whosoever. How do you keep loyal readers on board when you take away three of their favorite reads virtually every day. It's just slash and burn one more time, and the encounters wonder why no one signs up to buy the paper. Amazing

 

The sports section has fewer ads than any other section. Think about why that is.

 

Because nobody reads the sports section?

 

Because advertisers are afraid Jay Mariotti's face might appear near their ad?

 

I started my career in the same building. Capital Times a long time ago. Reading the list of layoffs hurts. Good people. Writers I looked up to then and still do.

 

As a rule of thumb, the sports section usually is a loss leader for newspapers. It doesn't consistently get top-dollar ads, but it gets readers — boosting circulation (and ad rates) for the paper.

 

There's no where to run any longer.