Wired 2007 Predictions: Major paper will go Web-only

Maybe if you take away the other six, the seventh becomes appointment viewing and doubles in circ.

 

E&P did a huge piece on Sunday problems a few years ago. My recollection is they seemed to believe the circulation declines were more due to large cultural changes in how people spend their Sundays than in what we're doing. If this is true, we are unlikely to reverse this trend.

 

In other words, more people are out and about - fishing, hiking, going to museums, shows, etc. - and fewer are spending hours wading through a voluminous Sunday section with wire features on the Alaskan wilderness and the such.

Niche products - if papers are losing Sunday circulation, why not invest time/resources on a kick-ass weekend product that informs people of the best places/ways to enjoy their weekend time? And publish it on a Thursday - when readers are actually looking ahead to the weekend?

And, make sure you have a strong web component - like a searchable database of said events.

 

No, their point was that Sunday is no longer a day of leisure, that people are so busy during the week working longer hours and drving their kids all over creation that Sunday has become a day of errands and there no longer is time to digest such a huge newspaper.

Anyway, most large papers already put out a large weekend preview section, and for decades alt-weeklies have run copious listings, too.

 

Dallas has a web-only "newspaper."

http://www.pegasusnews.com/

 

Big paper here, ordinary Web site. We dip our toes in shifting resources online, but too many people see it as a dumping ground or some trend to really attack it. Of course, I bought Mrs. Editude a gift from a half-page ad we ran inside the A section of the felled-trees product.

 

I'd say both are very viable reasons why people are spending less time with our franchise sections.

In the context of the thread title, and the type of content that fits the web, I still go back to the idea that we need to do a better job of informing readers about where/how to enjoy their "free" time. We can do better than a once-a-week tab tucked behind the classifieds. And IF a major paper goes web-only in the next few years, it'll be because they're able to capture and monetize that audience - and give them the power to contribute (ie - user-generated restaurant reviews, movie reviews, etc.).

 

That's because most old presses couldn't handle the colour and offset requirements.
If someone is investing $50 million in new presses, I guarantee you he is looking beyond printing only newsprint. He's not spending that much money to have presses sit idle for most of the day after the press run.
Where I work, we had four presses and three did commercial work. Presses ran nearly 24 hours a day, which of course led to many breakdowns because there was no time for regular maintenance.
It might be the size of papers you were working at, but large papers certainly pursue advertising publishing.

 

I've worked for lots of large papers with pretty good color, and we've printed other newspapers, but not advertising fliers. You spelled it "colour," so maybe it's different up there than it is down here.

 

Maybe a paper in a big city, but not the leading paper in any city will go Web-only. That is the sort of things people write in magazines to get attention.