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The ever shrinking paper

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Paper Guy, May 11, 2009.

  1. bmm

    bmm Member

    Yeah I know how you feel. There are some days where I have one page and good design goes secondary to getting the content our readers expect. And the content we provide I hear is not good enough. I scrap AP on these days when I could run a good state round-up of MLB and NBA capsules of our state teams.
     
  2. bmm

    bmm Member

    Most days we are putting out a 10-12 page paper and charging 75 cents. The reader has noticed. I think we are not giving the reader everything they need, and the price is absurd.
     
  3. Gomer

    Gomer Active Member

    Our circulation is around 12,000 Monday-Saturday. When I got here five years ago we'd have four or five pages every day, minor ad stacks on half of them, with a midnight deadline our previous sports editor would run until 1 a.m. most of the time.

    Tomorrow I've got to fill three pages, except that there's a banner on front, a stack on the second, a half-page ad on the third and I have to be done by 11 p.m.

    Times change. You do the best you can.
     
  4. CM Punk

    CM Punk Guest

    Or if you're my boss, you cram the same shit you put on six pages last year into four this year. And I don't care if the nearest NBA team is 200 miles away, you put that shit centerpiece and bury all of your local copy. Plus, you miss deadline at least twice per week.

    The great thing is that there are no consequences.
     
  5. kleeda

    kleeda Active Member

    Heck, my paper yesterday was a great 20-minute read. Just what a fella on the go needed.
     
  6. I Should Coco

    I Should Coco Well-Known Member

    Funny thing at our shop: In February, our publisher committed to limiting our 40K, small-metro-area daily to two 12-page sections on Monday and Tuesday, including classifieds.

    After much wrangling between departments -- which do NOT work together in any way, shape or form -- the LIFE section thought it scored a "victory" by being placed in the A section, while sports was "stuck" on the front of the classified section.

    At that time, the estimate was sports would only get the cover page, agate on B2 and a broken page on B3. Classifieds will take up the rest.

    What's actually happened? Life department struggles to jam in Dear Abby, horoscopes and comics/puzzles because obits literally use three pages out of the 12-page A section on Monday and Tuesday. And our classified ad sales are so weak, sports usually has between five and six pages every Monday and Tuesday.

    Of course, those are the two nights we least need the space ... But as others have said, decisions on sizing the paper are usually out of our hands, so unfortunately, we just have to play the hand we're dealt. [/overused cliche thread]
     
  7. I think threads like these, though depressing, also highlight what's awesome about journalism. I mean where else would employees bitch about having less work to do? I know when I still worked at a paper, when our section started to shrink, it meant less work for us in sports ... less writing and fewer hours designing. And I hated it, because I knew the readers realized the quality of my product was declining.

    I guess my point is I find it highly respectable that most folks here are passionate enough about their craft that they'd rather work harder and longer than put out a shitty section/paper.
     
  8. FuturaBold

    FuturaBold Member

    +1
     
  9. Wonderlic

    Wonderlic Member

    To be completely honest, I've found it easier to lay out a 5-page section than a 2 1/2 page section because I'm not hacking everything down and have far fewer decisions about what's getting cut, use of art, etc. Sometimes more pages actually equals less work.
     
  10. rascalface

    rascalface Member

    Answered a call the other day from a reader... "It's amazing how much information is packed into six pages. I can read through the entire sports section in 10 minutes and then throw it in the trash." Glad my sarcasm detector wasn't broken, because then the guy just went off.
     
  11. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    I hope you gave him a stern lecture about recycling.
     
  12. NoOneLikesUs

    NoOneLikesUs Active Member

    We're running pathetic "Please buy a car!" house ads now, sometimes wasting as much as a full page on these things. The ads are essentially a picture of a car with some light text urging consumers to contact their local dealer.

    We're so fucked.
     
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