My local newspaper is an expensive delivery system for junk mail

Newspapers are dieing. Many of the big ones are in trouble.

Tom

 

It's Christmas. Of course you're going to get heavier ad volume. And, yes, it all is information. It also pays for the news columns that you prefer to read (I prefer those, too). Not counting the pre-printed inserts/circulars, most American newspapers try to have a minimum of 50 percent news, 50 percent ads in the regular paper. Publishers would really like to have about 70 percent ads in order to make a profit so they may continue to provide their product.

A couple of questions: In reading the meat of your paper, did you notice any stories mssing that you would have liked to have read? Did you read anything in the paper that you thought was particularly interesting? That's a better guage of the value of your $1.50 than trying to weigh the product like a steak (using your meat metaphor). BTW, two pounds isn't a really big paper. I once weighed an issue of the paper I worked for and it came in at 7 pounds, 2 ounces -- and we were a medium-circulation paper -- with some special news sections for our readers.

 

Tom, you're spot on. Printed newspapers probably never will completely die -- right now, hard copy reading is deeply ingrained in us. But I believe, and have thought so for more than 20 years, that electronic versions of news dissemination efforts are going to supplant the paper products. We have 24/7 access to news reports, rapid updates, and the ability to choose our likes and dislikes for determining which news we want to read (although that ability comes with some potentially terrifying pitfalls). As far as buying a hard-copy paper, if it is set up right, an electronic version with a print feature can do the same thing. In fact, at least one major news company has all its papers available on line (at a modest cost) as it looks in print -- ads and all -- and readers can actually print the pages/ads they want.

 

Television's just an advertising delivery system, too.

 

If you look at it this way, you have two pounds of paper delivered to your house for $1.50. It will cost $4.80 to deliver 2 lbs of junk mail priority over night by USPS to your house. Is it cheaper?

 

There is a second part of the problem. The "news" contains more opinion and entertainment or canned stories thatare just pulled from a "universal" source. True reporting and investigation is now left to freelancers rather than news organizations.

 

Complaint noted. I recycle a lot of stuff out of the local Sunday paper, too, and I also get the Chicago Tribune, which has practically no dreck that needs to be 'deboned.' That's probably because being 90 miles away from Chicago I'm less likely to patronize Chicago merchants, so why should they pay to send me anything? And that of course is the bottom line. If an advertiser will pay for it, the paper will carry it, because they make their dough off that, not off your $1.50 (or $1.75, or $2.00, or ???). And fewer and fewer papers are making enough off the two combined to stay afloat, as previously stated. I wish it were otherwise, and I wish people had the time and attention span to actually read a newspaper, but then I get emails from professionals at work peppered with "text-speak." But I digress ...

The local rag (which I used to work for, so I can call it that ) now requires subscribers to 'opt-in' to get the weekly television section. I guess enough people have cable that they can get their TV listings right off the tube. Don't expect any paper to do that with advertising, though!

Want a fun assignment? Do a content analysis of your local TV newscast. Pretend it's costing you $1 a minute to watch it, and then add up what you really use compared to the dreck you would have tossed if it were sitting in your lap. Your time is valuable here, too (and probably a lot more than $1 a minute, no offense intended!). You will probably "pay" $5 for content you want and $25 for ads, if-it-bleeds-it-leads sensational stuff, too much weather and sports, and the obligatory puppy adoption story from the local pound. I don't know how that would translate to your weighing the paper, but there might be a correlation!

I'm sure someone has figured out a good way to do that with Internet sites, too, but of course PriusChat would always be top-shelf! :eyebrows:

Jim

 

Sorry, can't agree with any of that. The definition of "news" is always bandied about by reporters and editors, but most agree it invovles information that people would like to know. "Entertainment" as a category certainly is news according to the basic definition, even if it is only Paris and Britney. "Canned" stories doesn't mean anything; feature stories are pulled from "off-wires" -- McClatchey, Tribune Media and the like -- that don't normally supply breaking news, and they are very readable; i.e., newsworthy, as in recent stories on Pearl Harbor. AP, which is No. 1 for breaking news, regularly produces feature stories that often are played as the main story on Sunday's Page 1 or Lifestyle or Sports. Your reference to "true reporting" doesn't cut it -- I once spent months tracking down a story that was a feature piece, but it involved as much hard-work investigative reporting as I ever did. And freelancers rarely do investigative pieces for mainline newspapers.

 

I actually went through the newspapers I received over the last week. With your definition, I have to agree with you. There is an overabundance of editorial pieces, but given the real constraints that newspapers are under, I was too far off base. However, hard-work investigation is much too rare and I wish there was much more of the hard work like you described.

 

Love 'em or hate 'em, ads are here to stay. They're an ingrained part of the way our culture/economy works.

Those newspaper ads are why you pay so little for the paper. Without the ads, the actual cost (the entire production cost divided by the copies sold) is probably a lot more than the buck-fifty you pay.

And ads make TV watching free (not counting cable/satellite service, but that's another story). Without ads you'd have to pay a fee to every TV channel you watch. Even bus fares would be higher if it weren't for those ads on the side.

When I used to get the Sunday paper, I liked all the ads. They were a great source of fire-starting material on a cold winter evening.

 

I realize the ads help pay for the paper, but it seems bizarre that I have to deconstruct (remove several kilograms of pulp) every paper before I can read anything. It is an incredible waste of paper, effort and time. On Sundays we get both the San Francisco Chronicle and The Fresno Bee. The Bee consistently has more ads (number and mass) - while the Chronicle has a larger circulation over a larger geographic area (northern California). Newspapers are in trouble and searching for profitable solutions. Contributing to greater and greater solid waste is not an answer.

 

Actually, I was going to say that it's the ads, the junk, that fiscally supports the paper.

The U.S. mailman told me that it's those junk mail flyers that support the U.S. postal service. If it wasn't for the bulk mail stuff the postage paid for everything else would go way up. He hates delivering the stuff but realizes it pays his salary. And unlike other mail, he doesn't have to sort it, just drop a chunk at each address.

 

If you examined all of a week's worth of papers in detail, you may have the makings of an investigative reporter. (That may not be a good thing.)

But I'd like to point out that there is a lot of investigation into stories of all types, not just Watergate journalism. Simply determining the facts of a routine meeting can be investigative and often more difficult than finding out if Nixon played dirty. In the St. Pete Times, you have one of the leaders in good journalism nearby.

 

Yesterday, I made the effort to read the Front Page of the St. Pete Times from 1924. I was really surprised because it would have been indistinguishable from today's papers. The leading stories were:
1) The Owen's valley rebellions in CA over Los Angles water rights. (LA has a water problem!)
2) How the Ketchup King in NYC was assailed by a woman threatening to "Blow his head off with a Gun". Quite the scandal with here jumping into his car (while moving!) and resulting in her arrest. (Celebrity Gossip involving a stalker!)

What is news has not changed. Now I'm sure there were unhappy letters to the editor about the need for more investigative reporting back then as well.

Unfortunately, I do not know how much of the Sunday paper was advertising back then.