Fewer days or fewer pages?

[deskslave]

Something DanOregon brought up on the AJC thread got me thinking, and I didn't want to jack that one, so I made my own.

He mentioned not wanting to bother with a paper if it's not at least 24 pages. And while this question doesn't affect papers like the AJC (at least not yet), I think it's likely to become an issue at papers of increasing size as we move down this ****brick road.

So, the question is: Would you rather a paper print seven days a week with perhaps 15 percent fewer pages and less content than is desirable, or would you rather a paper print six days a week and be a bit heftier. To steal a phrase from the inimitable Conrad Fink, is it more important that a paper plunk in the driveway rather than plinking, or is it more important that there be some sound every morning?

To put it into concrete terms, let's say Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, you currently run 24 pages; Thursday, Friday and Saturday you run 32 and Sunday you run 48. (Numbers pulled completely out of my ass, more for ease-of-math purposes than anything.) Publisher comes down, says "we're spending too much on newsprint, cut 24 pages a week."

Obviously, you can cut the Monday paper entirely and get those 24 pages all in one fell swoop. Or you could cut Monday and Tuesday to 20, Thursday, Friday and Saturday to 28 and Sunday to 44.

Which do you do?

 

[DanOregon]

DS - I drop a day. Make Monday-Tuesday a "double-issue," you tighten up the supply of days advertisers can choose from, and perhaps increase demand.

 

[deskslave]

DS - I drop a day. Make Monday-Tuesday a "double-issue," you tighten up the supply of days advertisers can choose from, and perhaps increase demand.

How do you make it a double issue? You can't add any pages on any of the other days. (Well, at least under my invented rules. :D)

 

[Mystery_Meat]

Definitely pages. If you print fewer pages, you'll either cut lower-tier stories or cut a few inches from each story. If you skip a day and something major breaks that day, you let down the readers that don't go to your website. Of course, when that becomes a minority, the question becomes moot.

 

[jps]

that's just it, mm ... the model is changing. I think there's going to end up being a way to use the print to supplement the online and vice versa.

I think either way is doable ... one way not mentioned is to cut web width, if possible. if you go from, say, 25 to 23 inches, you're gonna gain a lot of print/paper. maybe that's all you've gotta do.

if I have to stick to the options, though? depends on the market, but I think many can and will start cutting out monday.

 

[Simon_Cowbell]

Something DanOregon brought up on the AJC thread got me thinking, and I didn't want to jack that one, so I made my own.

He mentioned not wanting to bother with a paper if it's not at least 24 pages. And while this question doesn't affect papers like the AJC (at least not yet), I think it's likely to become an issue at papers of increasing size as we move down this ****brick road.

So, the question is: Would you rather a paper print seven days a week with perhaps 15 percent fewer pages and less content than is desirable, or would you rather a paper print six days a week and be a bit heftier. To steal a phrase from the inimitable Conrad Fink, is it more important that a paper plunk in the driveway rather than plinking, or is it more important that there be some sound every morning?

To put it into concrete terms, let's say Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, you currently run 24 pages; Thursday, Friday and Saturday you run 32 and Sunday you run 48. (Numbers pulled completely out of my ass, more for ease-of-math purposes than anything.) Publisher comes down, says "we're spending too much on newsprint, cut 24 pages a week."

Obviously, you can cut the Monday paper entirely and get those 24 pages all in one fell swoop. Or you could cut Monday and Tuesday to 20, Thursday, Friday and Saturday to 28 and Sunday to 44.

Which do you do?

Monday? Not in an NFL city.

 

[jps]

I agree, simon. depends on the market. but even then, what's to stop you from running mondays through the nfl season and then dropping it out of season?

 

[spikechiquet]

We have been a six-day shop for a while. We don't print Sunday (Saturday mornings paper is called "The Weekend Edition").
We also just got all overtime cut and our wedding announcement/birth announcement/church & club crap copy writer layed off for a month...so there's always that route.

 

[spnited]

I agree, simon. depends on the market. but even then, what's to stop you from running mondays through the nfl season and then dropping it out of season?

NASCAR

 

[OTD]

I think this trend of cutting days is bad, bad, bad. You want reading the paper to be a daily habit. If we take readers out of that habit, telling them in essence, that you don't need a paper everyday, then they're going to decide that they don't need a paper ANY day. And then we're screwed.

 

[spikechiquet]

I think this trend of cutting days is bad, bad, bad. You want reading the paper to be a daily habit. If we take readers out of that habit, telling them in essence, that you don't need a paper everyday, then they're going to decide that they don't need a paper ANY day. And then we're screwed.

But reducing the number of pages a week overall will just get a different complaint: People are getting less pages for the same amount of money.

Catch-22 rears its ugly head.

 

[OTD]

I think this trend of cutting days is bad, bad, bad. You want reading the paper to be a daily habit. If we take readers out of that habit, telling them in essence, that you don't need a paper everyday, then they're going to decide that they don't need a paper ANY day. And then we're screwed.

But reducing the number of pages a week overall will just get a different complaint: People are getting less pages for the same amount of money.

Catch-22 rears its ugly head.

They'll figure that out either way. Are the papers that are cutting a day cutting the subscription price?

 

[playthrough]

I think this trend of cutting days is bad, bad, bad. You want reading the paper to be a daily habit. If we take readers out of that habit, telling them in essence, that you don't need a paper everyday, then they're going to decide that they don't need a paper ANY day. And then we're screwed.

I don't agree with that anymore. I love the Sunday NYT because I can read the extra stuff for days. I know that doesn't make me a great buyer of media, but at least I bought something. Compare that to my local paper, which publishes 7x a week but mon-sat is pathetic and Sunday is only fat because of the circulars. It's a daily habit of depression. I dropped down to 2x a week delivery because I knew what the paper used to be and this one sucks.

 

[spikechiquet]

I think this trend of cutting days is bad, bad, bad. You want reading the paper to be a daily habit. If we take readers out of that habit, telling them in essence, that you don't need a paper everyday, then they're going to decide that they don't need a paper ANY day. And then we're screwed.

But reducing the number of pages a week overall will just get a different complaint: People are getting less pages for the same amount of money.

Catch-22 rears its ugly head.

They'll figure that out either way. Are the papers that are cutting a day cutting the subscription price?

They cut down to six before I got here, can't give you a solid answer on that.

 

[DanOregon]

By "double-issue" I meant publish on Monday, but put both days on the masthead - in addition to weekend sports roundups on Monday, you focus on looking ahead to the week, issues at a Monday board meeting, etc.
An interesting question though, what percentage of stories in a paper are "must prints" and how much is stuff taken from the wires to fill out a section. If you think about news that won't be irrelevant in 24 hours, you can focus on issue analysis stories etc. instead of a typhoon in Bangledesh or a bus crash in Maine.

 

[expendable]

I think this trend of cutting days is bad, bad, bad. You want reading the paper to be a daily habit. If we take readers out of that habit, telling them in essence, that you don't need a paper everyday, then they're going to decide that they don't need a paper ANY day. And then we're screwed.

I'm in your camp. Cut the number of pages, but keep our subscribers who are still in the habit of getting our product. Once they get out of the day to day habit of feeling they need the paper, then, they're gone for good.

 

[jps]

I agree, simon. depends on the market. but even then, what's to stop you from running mondays through the nfl season and then dropping it out of season?

NASCAR

cricket

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

In the 1980s I worked for a couple papers that were arguably the best of their circulation size despite tight news holes. But they produced excellent daily products because they invested a lot of money in copy editors who tightened stories like crazy and content editors who constantly questioned why we were running such-and-such at all and, if it were worth running at all, what could be done to make it better. You can cut the hell out of space and still have a good product, but not if you're cutting the editing operation to the bone. Because editing that tightly has to be done with a scalpel instead of a butcher knife, and that takes time.

 

[Brookerton]

We've been a 6-day a week paper for years, but were faced with this dilemma recently. We ended up cutting pages. If we went to five days we would have lost a lot of credibility. There was also no guarantee that would could bring that sixth day back when/if the economy got better.

 

[Jeremy Goodwin]

I'd rather cut pages. I would have no problem with cutting wire copy and going mostly local and making pro caps a sentence each or not using a wire feature.

Skipping a day just seems bad because you never know when big news will break and there is too much other daily news to miss.