Gannett buying The Dallas Morning News?

Gatehouse reported a six percent revenue drop, McClatchey an eight percent drop and Gannett 10 percent. Those three companies comprise a lot of papers of many different sizes. I think the paper you cite is either extremely rare or delusional.

 

Other than Monday and Tuesday, our paper still has a robust number of ads. We must be practically giving them away, however, for revenue to suck so bad.

 

I remember a study being passed around the newsroom 15 years ago or so - might have been NAA or Pew - that found newspaper quality had little impact on whether someone subscribed or read it or not - they were either newspaper readers or they weren't. One of those things I didn't think much about at the time...I'm sure the execs did.

 

My mom and dad have complained to me constantly in recent years about their local paper -- the cutbacks in coverage, the uptick in typos, head busts and general sloppiness -- but they wouldn't think of canceling their subscription. Reading the newspaper is something they've always done, so why change now? But honesty compels me to report that they're both 82 years old.

 

The experts from the ESPN thread already knew that quality and content have nothing to do with customer numbers.

 

Too bad newspapers didn't work like cable, where if you really like one channel, you end up getting 200 others. It might be an interesting plan for news orgs to band together - charge a basic access fee for a universal pay wall. More money gives you access to stories from the WSJ, NYT and Washington Post, CNN, etc. Digital advertising doesn't seem to be cutting it. Either that or include news site access in Internet bills.

 

Except, cord-cutters.

 

People aren't cutting the cord on the Internet.

 

The problem is the Internet will never attract enough advertisers to sustain anything but tiny Website staffs. Think about the specialty websites like rivals.com, scout.com, 247sports.com. They survive on subscriptions, not ads.

 

Cord-cutters are everywhere. They defy all expectations.

 

Netflix had over $8 billion in revenues last year. People will pay for content. They don't pay Netflix $12 a month or whatever to watch one show, but for a variety of options. Yes the NYT and Wash Post and other have done well with digital subscriptions, imagine if you could pay $20 and have unlimited access to over 200 of the best most trafficked sites and local sites? How you figure out how the money is divvied up I don't know, maybe local sites are toast or this will be like NCAA football where you have a top tier collecting most of the money and a second tier allowed to participate but for a smaller cut of the money.

 

Given the number of papers they own, I've always thought that was one place where Gannett could be a pioneer and do some good. Have a "Gannett Pass" or whatever you want to call it, where a flat fee gets you access to all of the Gannett papers around the country. There are so many of them that it could be a good value for the consumer, and on the revenue end it would make a subscription model more palatable for customers of other papers if 50 of the biggest newspapers in the country -- and in a number of cities, not just one region -- no longer gave away the product for free.
Gannett being Gannett they'd lose interest after six months or find another way to screw it up, but if anyone has the clout to make it work it's them.