Trib to be "AP Free" Next Week

Believe it or not, there's a little more involved in this issue than the agate page or even the sports section. Take a step backwards once in a while. It's either a pathetic negotiation ploy or bad judgment.

 

Newspapers for over a decade have had issues with the pay structure of the Associated Press.
This is your step backwards: Newspapers benefit from roughly 35%-40% of what AP produces. Yet, newspapers pay roughly 65% of the tab. You think the AP reduced newspaper rates by $20 million in one year for the hell of it? A cooperative is supposed to beneficial for all those involved, not a crippling, unsustainable burden to one of its reciprocates.

 

Yes, I'm sure AP is why the Tribune Co. is in bad shape. Has nothing to do with the economy, newspapers failure to embrace the Internet, or the fact that Tribune Co. has over a period of several decades reduced the overall quality of its product in the name of higher profits.

And considering the AP is run by a board comprised of newspaper publishers, including Sam Zell, newspapers need to quit whining and fix whatever problems exist in the pricing structure of their cooperative.

 

The AssZits that run the Tribune Co. is a separate argument.

 

This is going to impact the other Tribune papers because they pick up pages from Chicago.

 

I'm told we're going to what I call "AP Light" starting at the first of the year. Not sure if we get the same agate pack, but I'm told we'll still have coverage of state teams, which, since we're in the DMZ of the north-south split, helps, but do I still get the Grizzlies-Hornets capsule everyone really wants?

 

We failed to embrace the internet!

We're giving all our copy away for free on the internet!

Well, which is it?

 

Exactly.

When I last held a staff job at a newspaper -- and it was a Tribune outlet -- my primary responsibilities entailed writing for the paper's internet site, and blogging.

At least half of everybody's job at newspapers today, whether they "embrace" it or not, is to do whatever they do for the Web, be it writing, editing or production work. First, and as quickly as possible, before whatever they're going to do "for the paper."

In so far as newspapers have not embraced the internet, or tried to, that has only been because they are not making any real money off of it.

In that context, any lack of a full embrace should be somewhat understandable.

 

Newspapers were terribly late getting to the Internet and when they did they made the mistake of thinking it was going to be complementary to their printed product. Places like Craigs List pounded them over the head with it. The Wall St. Journal is about the only publication that got it right and charged for content from the get go.

 

People do not pay to advertise there.

Yep, that would have really turned around newspapers' fortunes.

And the money that craigslist does get from job listings, etc. ($100M) only amounts to 10% of what newspapers make from classified ($1B).

Spread that $100M across every newspaper in the country, and you're talking about an average of less than $100K per paper.

Might save a few jobs, but hardly something that would turn around any paper.

And maybe they are about the only paper that could get it right by doing that.

More than three-fourths of WSJ readers have college degrees, and their average household income is $234,909.

 

The point is that newspapers didn't even grasp that classifieds, historically a bread-and-butter revenue stream, were going away and they lost them without a fight.

Excuses. From a point of survival, newspapers needed to get in early, develop a pay model and own their local news on the Web. Instead, they grudgingly came late to the party, then mistakenly gave away products that in the name of shareholders they had already been gutting since the early '80s .