You are the media company CEO ...

I think publishing daily is a waste - save it for a Wednesday, Friday and Sunday and put the breaking stuff on the web - focus on issues and meatier pieces. Too much time and newsprint is wasted on stuff that won't be "news" by the time the paper hits the front door already.

 

I agree this is probably true going forward. But, right this second, there are 200K people who subscribe to my paper daily. On a great day full of breaking news (usually involving the local pro sports team), we get 50K unique views.

That means, at minimum, there are 150K who do use the paper, every day, to get their breaking news. Abandoning them right now doesn't make a whole lot of bidness sense to me. Maybe in five years or so, when they are all dead.

 

I'm inclined to agree with this.

 

I would politely decline to give my product away on the Internet for free.

 

Because by that definition, even the sorriest excuse for a tinytown daily is going to be more valuable than the NYT or WSJ in terms of providing unique local news (albeit uncompelling and crappily reported). And even if you go a M-F production schedule with Friday being a weekend edition, that's $15 bucks a week single copy. Better make sure the paper machines take bills or plastic.

The only other quibble I have with your well-thought out, reasonable plan is the use of commission as the end-all be-all of ad rep salary. Hungry reps can be good reps, but they can also be desperate and overbearing reps -- like those folks yelling at you from their mall kiosk to try that cream they're always selling -- or unethical ones. You don't want the guys repping your upscale, revolutionary print product to come off like street preachers.

My vision is a lot like yours, but with one fairly sizeable tweak: charge $4-5 bucks and make it a newspaper/magazine hybrid. Do all the long-form features and deep analysis and probing commentary there. Step up on stock quality so it's something that has the durability of a magazine with the feel of a newspaper (I admit: I have no clue if this is possible or feasable). All breaking/routine stuff goes on the website with heavy advertising and cross-pollenation for the weekly pub.

Oh, and for online commenting: Go to a Something Awful-style system. One-time fee, $5-10 bucks. Don't be stupid or you get suspended or banned. Selling an extra feature on the website -- especially one that isn't essential to enjoyment of the site -- is an easier transaction than having people pony up weekly or daily for the whole thing. If people buy in, hey, that's money. If they don't, oh well.

 

It would work, but only in places that have little or no competition and are smaller dailies... up to 15K maybe.

 

It is feasible. You could go to a 40-pound or 50-pound stock without upping the newsprint budget too badly (most newspapers are around 30-pound), and that little extra heft makes a huge difference in a publication 20 pages or longer.

 

With all seriousness, it might depend on which side of the aisle. A business sider would lean toward cutting and slashing product. Someone more in tune with the end product would try to tweak the business model.

 

Page 3 girls...or an inside page with color. Bare tits. Make 'em local girls too. We can do beefcake too if there's a market for it.

Screw this family centric crap. If a player or council member swears I want it in the paper as is.

Also I want a few more puzzles. People love puzzles. Give 'em more puzzles.

 

Run 4 pages of just police blotter. People love to know if their neighbor got busted...

 

I didn't know where else to put this, so...

All I'll say is... damn. Look at the size of that paper. Makes you sad, don't it? It's like the kid is mocking us from 1914. "You still work for these things? Idiot."

 

Clutchcargo and I are on much the same wavelength here.