Huntsville Times buyouts

Dog is absolutely correct about papers like Decatur and its now sister paper, Florence.

And in an interesting turn, my Huntsville source tells me Decatur has swooped in and added to its payroll two stud page designers who took The Times' money and got out with close to six figures in the first round of buyouts a year ago.

Good for them.

 

It sounds like Decatur should hire some of the available talent to throw a few more uppercuts and body blows.

 

the downward spiral of the h-times certainly is sad. for my money, it and mobile were consistently the best two sports sections in the state.

 

Decatur buying Florence, to me, was the best move I've seen a paper make in a long, long time.

Florence is a good, college town, with what I would imagine are relatively high median income and education levels. There are no TV stations of note there. There's no legit paper anywhere close to it. There aren't even that many radio stations in that area -- certainly none that you can't compete with for ad revenue.

Add that to the fact that Decatur bought the Moulton (I believe) paper a couple of years back, and look at the area now controlled by the Sheltons. Those guys have to be printing money at this point.

If they can make serious inroads into Madison in the next couple of years, you've got yourself a new player at the big table.

With their maneuverability, and the relatively good shape they're in financially, if Decatur can stay even somewhat current in delivery technology, there's no reason that paper won't be, at worst, the second largest paper in the state in the next 10 years.

 

If it's a dedicated copy editor who doesn't build pages, that's sadly not uncommon anymore. And it's one more than a lot of places have.

 

Went through Decatur and Birmingham on my spring trip... Decatur Daily is an EXCELLENT paper for a city its size and I'm not surprised at all the kudos being given to it here. B-ham has a spectacular sports section during fall and it's pretty good most other seasons. Hard to believe two Newhouse papers (Huntsville and B-Ham) could be so different.

 

birmingham is definitely the place to go for bama and auburn these days, but that's its main focus now. in the past, b-ham went to the final four, the masters, had a fulltime nascar guy and a really good outdoors guy.
that stuff has gone by the wayside in the past two years.
huntsville and mobile continue to have more well-rounded sections.

 

I thought they missed their best chance when they failed to convert from PM to AM ahead of the Huntsville Times. They were resolute that they would not make the change until Huntsville did it first. Not very bold, that.

Agreed on the Florence buy, also.

 

No matter how good the Decatur Daily can be as a whole, its sports section will always be... squishy.

 

Why, whatever are you talking about?

 

Some of us don't. What's the inside joke?

 

Ya, I don't really get it either. I mean, there's a big, BIG body of water north of Decatur and a bridge that leads right into the city, but squishy?