BH media layoffs

[Roscablo]

Here's what the publisher of my old paper wrote today - and wow, $2 for a daily newspaper? I don't think that's going to help the cause

From the Publisher: We’re focused on serving you despite a challenging 2018

Between writeups like that and newspapers all over the place practically begging for people to sign up for online subscriptions with the support journalism taglines it's a bleak, bleak time for newspapers. That's been obvious for a long time, really, but now the powers that be are putting it right out there in front of everyone and not even hiding it. The end passed a long time ago.

I hate seeing people lose their jobs, and man, it just adds insult to injury all around to see how it's being handled.

Somehow justifying things with huge price increases for way less content and quality is crazy. Then more or less blaming Amazon and the like? Having reporters go on Twitter and beg people to get online subscriptions so local journalism doesn't go way -- because, yeah, that's the job they signed up for -- like it's the public's fault. When actually it's been a terrible business model and ignoring the internet for how long and not adjusting and the suits turning a blind eye and cutting and looking for profits and whatever else and not actually caring for local media or their own product?

It all just drives me batty.

 

[wicked]

BH also bought Martinsville a while back, right?

 

[Cosmo]

BH pretty much owns everything in Virginia, save for the Pilot, Daily News Record, and Daily Press.

 

[JRoyal]

Between writeups like that and newspapers all over the place practically begging for people to sign up for online subscriptions with the support journalism taglines it's a bleak, bleak time for newspapers. That's been obvious for a long time, really, but now the powers that be are putting it right out there in front of everyone and not even hiding it. The end passed a long time ago.

I hate seeing people lose their jobs, and man, it just adds insult to injury all around to see how it's being handled.

Somehow justifying things with huge price increases for way less content and quality is crazy. Then more or less blaming Amazon and the like? Having reporters go on Twitter and beg people to get online subscriptions so local journalism doesn't go way -- because, yeah, that's the job they signed up for -- like it's the public's fault. When actually it's been a terrible business model and ignoring the internet for how long and not adjusting and the suits turning a blind eye and cutting and looking for profits and whatever else and not actually caring for local media or their own product?

It all just drives me batty.

The public isn't without blame. So many people think access to news should be free or dirt cheap because that's the model we gave them. Heck, subscription prices barely covered delivery in the past, and at times they didn't even cover that because ads did. And when advertising was the driving force for revenue, that worked. But now it simply doesn't, and people don't want to pay. It would be like someone going into a Starbucks and demanding caramel macchiato for free and then when they had to pay for it scoffing because they can get coffee free at work. Sure, you can, but it's probably crappy coffee. News is one of the only commodities I can think of where people don't place a value on it. There's always the "we can get it from TV or free" mentality, but there is so much that TV depends on news for that people don't realize.

And we can blame the industry for not reacting and all that like we have for the last decade plus, but that doesn't do anything to save it. Moving to a subscription-based model might. Yes, we need to provide content to make people want to subscribe, but with the right staff, I think that can still be done. A lot of it will be digital subscriptions, but that has to be part of it.

I work for BH and they closed one of the papers in the town I live in, and after it closed, I heard so many people complain about not having a local paper anymore. But when I asked them when the last time they picked up a copy was, barely any of them had picked it up in the previous month. And it was a good paper with good content. They just consumed it online for free. And they didn't care about it until it was gone. Just seems like that's going to be the case for a lot of local news outlets -- people won't realize how much they depend on them until they don't have them.

 

[Roscablo]

The public isn't without blame. So many people think access to news should be free or dirt cheap because that's the model we gave them. Heck, subscription prices barely covered delivery in the past, and at times they didn't even cover that because ads did. And when advertising was the driving force for revenue, that worked. But now it simply doesn't, and people don't want to pay. It would be like someone going into a Starbucks and demanding caramel macchiato for free and then when they had to pay for it scoffing because they can get coffee free at work. Sure, you can, but it's probably crappy coffee. News is one of the only commodities I can think of where people don't place a value on it. There's always the "we can get it from TV or free" mentality, but there is so much that TV depends on news for that people don't realize.

And we can blame the industry for not reacting and all that like we have for the last decade plus, but that doesn't do anything to save it. Moving to a subscription-based model might. Yes, we need to provide content to make people want to subscribe, but with the right staff, I think that can still be done. A lot of it will be digital subscriptions, but that has to be part of it.

I work for BH and they closed one of the papers in the town I live in, and after it closed, I heard so many people complain about not having a local paper anymore. But when I asked them when the last time they picked up a copy was, barely any of them had picked it up in the previous month. And it was a good paper with good content. They just consumed it online for free. And they didn't care about it until it was gone. Just seems like that's going to be the case for a lot of local news outlets -- people won't realize how much they depend on them until they don't have them.

But you're blaming the consumer when that's the system we set up. For it to be free online. Newspapers just never got in front of this. That's not the public's fault that they got used to it being for free. I have no doubt people will mourn the loss of the product. Hopefully something gets figured out.

 

[crimsonace]

The public isn't without blame. So many people think access to news should be free or dirt cheap because that's the model we gave them. Heck, subscription prices barely covered delivery in the past, and at times they didn't even cover that because ads did. And when advertising was the driving force for revenue, that worked. But now it simply doesn't, and people don't want to pay. It would be like someone going into a Starbucks and demanding caramel macchiato for free and then when they had to pay for it scoffing because they can get coffee free at work. Sure, you can, but it's probably crappy coffee. News is one of the only commodities I can think of where people don't place a value on it. There's always the "we can get it from TV or free" mentality, but there is so much that TV depends on news for that people don't realize.

Sadly, there's a belief among a lot of the public that TV is the pinnacle of journalism because someone sitting on a pretty set reads it to them every night, without realizing that much TV journalism has the depth of your average kiddie pool. That's said with all respect to our TV brethren, but it's the way the medium is set up. TV is also going through some difficult times and cutbacks.

Read a TV station website and the writing is usually very poor. I rarely watch television news, but top-rated TV station spent the first five minutes covering a breaking local story. Very little time was spent actually reporting the story, but in that time, we heard "as those of you following our app saw on our push alert," "as we reported on Twitter three hours ago (that station didn't break the story)," "go to our website for coverage." It was all about the station's self-promotion and not about reporting the story. Yet, much of the public will consider this a bigger deal than anything reported in their local newspaper. We all know you get what you pay for, but thanks to TV and radio, news has been given away (in bite-size pieces) for free for decades, and people have begun to expect it to be free. They don't realize they're paying for it through their cable bill. If we could make everyone who subscribes to ESPN pay $1/month to our local papers like TV stations do, we'd be in much better shape.

 

[Tarheel316]

I hear Greensboro got hit pretty hard - 23 altogether.

 

[steveu]

A little nugget buried in a story from Omaha. Gannett lost nearly $14 million in the fourth quarter. Anyone want to start the clock?

Grace: The World-Herald has taken some hits, but we're still fighting

 

[BurnsWhenIPee]

I respect the **** out of the World-Herald for being transparent and writing more than one story about their layoffs.

I can't help but contrast that story, with compelling reasons to subscribe, with the Twitter wailings from people at my local Gannett rag. Much of that included snarky lines about how "I need to feed my family," which does nothing for me. Don't treat it like a charity, tell me that I will be missing something I desperately need if I don't subscribe.

 

[steveu]

Hopefully the situation improves enough in Omaha. I know, I can dream. But Omaha has always been a paper that gets it right. They've had to trim some pages, which is a shame, but they fill the remaining pages with great content. And I always love the College World Series special sections.

 

[wicked]

I can't help but contrast that story, with compelling reasons to subscribe, with the Twitter wailings from people at my local Gannett rag. Much of that included snarky lines about how "I need to feed my family," which does nothing for me. Don't treat it like a charity, tell me that I will be missing something I desperately need if I don't subscribe.

I get what you’re saying, but these folks are journalists and not sales people. They don’t exactly have a polished pitch. They just want to pay the mortgage and the tuition and for a few more months, until the next round of layoffs. They’re begging because they’re lacking answers, like most of us.

 

[LanceyHoward]

A little nugget buried in a story from Omaha. Gannett lost nearly $14 million in the fourth quarter. Anyone want to start the clock?

Grace: The World-Herald has taken some hits, but we're still fighting

That nugget is misleading. According to the press release Gannett had to take a paper loss because of the revaluation of deferred tax assets due to the new tax law. This is a one-time, non cash transaction and if you back that out they turned a 30 million dollar profit.

But retail advertising is cratering. Both Gannett and McClatchy reported 18 percent advertising drops.

And one statistic I found staggering came from the McClatchy conference call transcript. McClatchy used to spend 20% of revenue on newsprint. Now McClatchy spends four percent. That tells you how much the size of the paper has shrunk.

The CEO of Gannett also said he is committed to printing seven days a week. So I expect reductions in print frequency at Gannett very soon.

 

[QYFW]

 

[wicked]

The price of newsprint also spiked about 10 years ago, accounting for some of that difference.

 

[melock]

BH also bought Martinsville a while back, right?

Martinsville Marketing Services - BH Media Group

Looks like it.

 

[Doom and gloom]

A little nugget buried in a story from Omaha. Gannett lost nearly $14 million in the fourth quarter. Anyone want to start the clock?

Grace: The World-Herald has taken some hits, but we're still fighting

And even if the other paper companies aren't losing $14M, they'll parrot what Gannett does in terms of slashing and burning.

 

[Cosmo]

This is sobering.

Death By Inches

 

[I Should Coco]

This is sobering.

Death By Inches

A good read ... although very depressing. Because it's dead-on accurate.

My main worry anymore isn't that newspapers (and radio, TV, straight-up news websites) will no longer provide the journalism we need as a democracy.

I worry that thanks to staff cutbacks, tweets, aborted attempts at video and countless other panic attacks, coverage of the community has declined so much the death of newspapers won't even be noticed.

We used to joke about offering $20 to anyone in our building — outside of the newsroom — who could name three of the past week's front-page headlines, or at least recall what three of the A1 stories were about. We never would have lost a cent because the ad staff, business office and composing department never read the paper.

Now it's that way for the newsroom, at least regarding the print edition. You can tell when we have our daily budget meeting and stories, photos, columns are on the budget which already ran in that day's paper.

Other than the copy desk (which has to read proofs of the paper each night), NO ONE reads the print edition. Not the reporters. Not the photographers. Not the city editor. Not even the managing editor, who used to read the thing front to back every morning, red pencil in hand. The red-marked paper stuffed in my mailbox used to irritate me, but now I miss it. At least I knew somebody was reading.

 

[Bronco77]

Other than the copy desk (which has to read proofs of the paper each night), NO ONE reads the print edition. Not the reporters. Not the photographers. Not the city editor. Not even the managing editor, who used to read the thing front to back every morning, red pencil in hand. The red-marked paper stuffed in my mailbox used to irritate me, but now I miss it. At least I knew somebody was reading.

At several of my career stops, I remember receiving this type of staff-wide memo from top editors: "According to our circulation department, only 43 percent of the newsroom staff takes home delivery of the paper," followed by a "suggestion" that we subscribe. Part of this certainly was a push to build circulation, if only slightly, but it also was an effort to get us to read the paper consistently.

And I also recall strongly-worded memos ordering us to read the paper every day after items that previously ran in print appeared again, or a first-day headline accompanied a second-day story.

 

[BurnsWhenIPee]

I have friends at my former shop who I still am in regular contact with.

We went to lunch during basketball season, and he was very upbeat, because after some significant changes (cuts) in coverage area, the constant flow of phone and e-mail complaints from readers had scaled way back to only a trickle.

I told him I see how that makes his life easier, but is that really a good thing? Faithful readers who are engaged with that product, and want to get their news from you, have either given up the fight to see what they want, or have given up on the product entirely. Being the subject of readers' anger may suck, but once apathy takes over, you're dead.