DFM bloodletting continues

[Old Time Hockey]

Latest bloodshed, apparently, is in the photo departments. Not many details yet.

 

[MTM]

 

[PFM]

Long Beach Press-Telegram lost both of its sports writers, loss to their preps and Long Beach State community:

 

[PFM]

OC Register lost its only sports videographer. Did mainly preps but also contributed USC, Dodgers playoffs, and others:


And Riverside P-E lost its No. 2 preps writer (lost its No. 3 in the previous round of buyouts.)

 

[Fredrick]

From reading this thread and Eugene being sold to Gatehouse I really feel this week took a big step toward ending the print product. With all these reporters and photos let go, it seems like there's nothing left of the newspapers. Nothing. So maybe these papers are close to online only. Or ready for online only? If so, good luck. There's no difference in yours or my own website than a newspaper online only website. All will fail quickly, certainly withn the course of a half year. I mean no full time sportswriters in that Cali town for the first time since 1890? Cmon. The death of papers is here.

 

[LanceyHoward]

From reading this thread and Eugene being sold to Gatehouse I really feel this week took a big step toward ending the print product. With all these reporters and photos let go, it seems like there's nothing left of the newspapers. Nothing. So maybe these papers are close to online only. Or ready for online only? If so, good luck. There's no difference in yours or my own website than a newspaper online only website. All will fail quickly, certainly withn the course of a half year. I mean no full time sportswriters in that Cali town for the first time since 1890? Cmon. The death of papers is here.

Frederick

I think the LANG papers are getting close to shutting down. The Orange County Register was recently sold for a little over 50 million to DFI. But DFI flipped some land parcels the Register owned for 38 million so net cost was 15 million. If DFI only had to pay 15 million for Orange County you know things are not going well for the industry.

My understanding of the economics of the industry are that suburban papers have been hit the hardest. Suburban papers never attracted the retail advertising the big metro wide papers did. They made handsome profits selling classifieds at lower prices than the metro wide. If you lived in Long Beach you knew you not get many people driving in from San Bernardino County to buy a nine year old Corolla. So the seller would save a couple bucks and advertise in the local paper. The local suburban paper would have a much lower cost structure and make a lot of money from those classifieds. But revenues are gone.

As far as these papers going digital I don't think LANG has a digital strategy. I could not find Orange County Register in the Kindle Store when I just checked.

So what is the strategy? The hedge fund guys will squeeze the last ounce of cash and then close the doors, sell the furniture and move on, otherwise known as a repeat of what happened at the Tampa Tribune.

 

[I Should Coco]

Lancey, your take is right on the money, unfortunately.

Another issue ... wasn't there trouble distributing the OCR in the past? I seem to recall they dumped all their carriers/distribution people and hired some new company, and it ended up being a disaster.

Between the collapse of the classified advertising and never-ending difficulties in the circulation department, we may be seeing many print editions dying off in 2018.

 

[ChrisLong]

OCR lost a critical lawsuit with the carriers over whether they were actual employees or vendors or freelancers. It was a $35 million verdict that started crippling the papers. Then, the Kushner-Spitz undynamic duo took over and had no idea how to get the papers distributed. They struck one deal with another paper -- unbelievably, THE L.A.****INGTIMES -- to do the delivery and didn't pay them, resulting in a $3.5 million lawsuit.
Honestly, I lost track of how many lawsuits Kushner-Spitz were involved in as the head honchos of the OCR. Probably about a dozen.
And don't forget they created the new Los Angeles Register, with a 70-person staff and no plan for marketing or distribution. My friends in one of the targets areas -- Santa Monica -- never saw one and had no idea the paper existed. Oh, and about a month in, the 70 staffers were locked out of the Downtown L.A. building for non-payment.
"Riiiiing. Hello, Mr. Kushner, this is Stanford. We would like our diploma back."

 

[MileHigh]

Devastating to see. Many people I know are getting laid off. Friends, former co-colleagues.

I lived in the I.E. for 30 years. Put in 12-plus years between the Daily Bulletin and the Sun and enjoyed everything we did, but the unraveling began when Uncle Lean Dean came in and bought the Sun from Gannet on -- perfectly -- April 1, 1999. Loathed the Press-Enterprise because they were the competition. Had a cup of coffee with the Register half a decade back.

Consumption habits change. It's flat-out egregious to lay off these preps writers for the local publications that are charged to cover events in their neighborhoods.

Just pack up the tents and go home at this point. Newspaper ownership has **** all over themselves the past 20 years when their arrogance continued to think that they survived radio and TV, they'll surely survive the internet.

Who's left, one preps writer -- Sodenheimer -- in the L.A. market?

 

[poindexter]

Long Beach Press-Telegram lost both of its sports writers, loss to their preps and Long Beach State community:

These two guys were very, very VERY good. And did it all, tweeting, writing, video.. this is just terrible.

 

[LanceyHoward]

Devastating to see. Many people I know are getting laid off. Friends, former co-colleagues.

I lived in the I.E. for 30 years. Put in 12-plus years between the Daily Bulletin and the Sun and enjoyed everything we did, but the unraveling began when Uncle Lean Dean came in and bought the Sun from Gannet on -- perfectly -- April 1, 1999. Loathed the Press-Enterprise because they were the competition. Had a cup of coffee with the Register half a decade back.

Consumption habits change. It's flat-out egregious to lay off these preps writers for the local publications that are charged to cover events in their neighborhoods.

Just pack up the tents and go home at this point. Newspaper ownership has **** all over themselves the past 20 years when their arrogance continued to think that they survived radio and TV, they'll surely survive the internet.

Who's left, one preps writer -- Sodenheimer -- in the L.A. market?

My understanding of the coverage zone of LANG is that it consists of San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange and large parts of LA County (San Fernando Valley and South Bay). So the population of their coverage area is around 10 million.

Sodenheimer is at the LA Times so it appears that LANG has no prep writers left. Will LANG have beat writers for the county governments, all of whom have at least two million residents in the coverage area. Will they staff any city halls?

 

[ChrisLong]

The two mainstays of OCR preps -- Steve Fryer and Dan Albano -- are still there. They focus on Mater Dei and whatever team it is playing. It is hit and miss on the rest. They use several stringers. Fryer and Albano are top-notch newsmen ....... with about 100 schools in O.C.

 

[LanceyHoward]

OCR lost a critical lawsuit with the carriers over whether they were actual employees or vendors or freelancers. It was a $35 million verdict that started crippling the papers. Then, the Kushner-Spitz undynamic duo took over and had no idea how to get the papers distributed. They struck one deal with another paper -- unbelievably, THE L.A.****INGTIMES -- to do the delivery and didn't pay them, resulting in a $3.5 million lawsuit.
Honestly, I lost track of how many lawsuits Kushner-Spitz were involved in as the head honchos of the OCR. Probably about a dozen.
And don't forget they created the new Los Angeles Register, with a 70-person staff and no plan for marketing or distribution. My friends in one of the targets areas -- Santa Monica -- never saw one and had no idea the paper existed. Oh, and about a month in, the 70 staffers were locked out of the Downtown L.A. building for non-payment.
"Riiiiing. Hello, Mr. Kushner, this is Stanford. We would like our diploma back."

I don't know anything abut the particulars of the lawsuit. But I think that the death of the dead tree edition will be the inability to find cheap home delivery personnel. I delivered the Denver Post from 1971-1973 and there were four routes in my subdivision. Penetration was about 60-65%. So adjusted for inflation the delivery boys $400-450 a month.

I think the circulation of the Post is now generously, 150,000. Which means metro penetration is about 15%. So my neighborhood, which had 400 plus subscribers, has maybe 100 now. That is to big an area for a kid on a bike so now it is left to adults. Even if you pay $10 a paper for delivery those guys would only get $1,000 a month, less auto expenses, for working a couple hours every morning. As circulation continues to decline as the subscribers literally die the delivery guys make less or routes areas continue to expand which means the delivery guys have to work longer hours and pay more for gas. At some point the papers will not be able to find anyone.

 

[ChrisLong]

I don't know anything abut the particulars of the lawsuit. But I think that the death of the dead tree edition will be the inability to find cheap home delivery personnel. I delivered the Denver Post from 1971-9173 and there were four routes in my subdivision. Penetration was about 60-65%. So adjusted for inflation the delivery boys $400-450 a month.

I think the circulation of the Post is now generously, 150,000. Which means metro penetration is about 15%. So my neighborhood, which had 400 plus subscribers, has maybe 100 now. That is to big an area for a kid on a bike so now it is adults. Even if you pay $10 a paper for delivery those guys would only get $1,000 a month, elss auto expenses, for working a couple hours every morning. As circulation continues to decline as the subscribers literally die the delivery guys make less or routes areas continue to expand which means the delivery guys have to spend more time and pay more for gas. At some point the papers will not be able to find anyone.

So true.
Recently, there were ads in the OCR seeking delivery people for the Riverside paper. Work two or three hours a day, seven days a week, from 2:30 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. WOW, WHAT AN OPPORTUNITY. Must have your own truck, drivers license, insurance, etc. The potential pool of employees is actually a mud puddle.
A few years ago, if I felt an economic pinch, I actually thought about it. Working the night desk until 1 or so, check email, SJ and other websites, go down to the loading dock and add another 3 hours to my work day. Fortunately, I never got that financially destitute.

 

[I Should Coco]

The worsening conditions/economics of hiring drivers to deliver papers is made worse by the boom-town economy in our area. You can make much better money with much better hours at other businesses that always seem to be hiring.

Plus ... and this would be the biggest newspaper delivery driving negative for me ... in other jobs, you can ACTUALLY TAKE A DAY OFF without having to move mountains.

 

[Jake from State Farm]

I took a buyout from the Detroit News a month ago. My life situation changed so I would have taken it anyway, but I was the only full-time copy editor left in sports. Now, the two guys who handle the online shift are doing double duty and a couple of writers also are helping out, with more and more of the work sliding to the universal desk.

 

[Fredrick]

Just pack up the tents and go home at this point. Newspaper ownership has **** all over themselves the past 20 years when their arrogance continued to think that they survived radio and TV, they'll surely survive the internet.

Who's left, one preps writer -- Sodenheimer -- in the L.A. market?

I agree. It's time to pack up the tents and go home as you say. What's the point of continuing on? I guess there's still a chance of making a few dollars off the folks who simply have to have a print newspaper. The fact places like these that lay almost everybody off are still in business shows you there still is enough interest in the print product to keep going. At this point it's not even worth discussing. It's time to just kill all newspapers and let the companies go online only and they'll finally close shop completely within a year.

 

[PFM]

Who's left, one preps writer -- Sodenheimer -- in the L.A. market?

My understanding of the coverage zone of LANG is that it consists of San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange and large parts of LA County (San Fernando Valley and South Bay). So the population of their coverage area is around 10 million.

Sodenheimer is at the LA Times so it appears that LANG has no prep writers left.

LA Times has Sondheimer, and their OC community paper, the Daily Pilot (covering Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach) has three staff preps sports writers. I'm not familiar with the rest of their preps coverage.

SCNG has: OC Register - Steve Fryer and Dan Albano, I.E./Riverside Press-Enterprise - Eric-Paul Johnson (had three full timers before last year's buyouts), Daily Breeze - Damian Calhoun (moved from OCR during buyouts, also their MLS/Soccer reporter), San Gabriel Valley Tribune - Fred Robledo, James Escarcega

LA Daily News, Long Beach Press-Telegram and (as far as I can tell), San Bernardino Sun and Inland Valley Daily Bulletin have no full-time preps sports writers.

 

[MileHigh]

LA Times has Sondheimer, and their OC community paper, the Daily Pilot (covering Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach) has three staff preps sports writers. I'm not familiar with the rest of their preps coverage.

SCNG has: OC Register - Steve Fryer and Dan Albano, I.E./Riverside Press-Enterprise - Eric-Paul Johnson (had three full timers before last year's buyouts), Daily Breeze - Damian Calhoun (moved from OCR during buyouts, also their MLS/Soccer reporter), San Gabriel Valley Tribune - Fred Robledo, James Escarcega

LA Daily News, Long Beach Press-Telegram and (as far as I can tell), San Bernardino Sun and Inland Valley Daily Bulletin have no full-time preps sports writers.

That's a frickin' embarrassment. The most talent-rich area of prep athletes probably in the country across numerous sports.

One in the I.E. is a big-time joke. As said, i put in many years there many years ago. Habits change. But with, what, 100 schools out there, it's a damn shame. We used to do four zones with stringers and full-timers on Friday nights in the fall.

 

[HanSenSE]

Apparently, it's not nice to say bad things about the hedge fund that owns you.

Did the Sentinel’s Owner Delete a Local Story? - Good Times Santa Cruz