Last week, Sam Zell, CEO of Tribune, and COO Randy Michaels announced a set of deep cuts, saying that shrinking revenue left them no choice.
They said they would trim 500 pages of news each week from the company’s dozen papers, including The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times. Their aim is a paper with pages – excluding classified advertising and special ad sections – split 50-50 between news content and ads.
Zell’s plan is an accelerated version of what many newspaper companies are already undertaking in the hope of staving off the kind of huge dislocation that occurred in other industries, like the steel business in the 1980s or the domestic automobile business today. In those cases, the pressure came from legacy costs, labor and foreign competition. In the newspaper business, which struggles with those costs as well, the biggest threat is the migration of advertisers and readers to the Internet.
I think Zell is condemning his empire to the same mediocrity and failure as GM. What do you think?
What’s the percentage for this site?
The Chicago Tribune is pretty thin already.
This would be fine with me, as long as the crossword is unchanged. I only get the saturday paper that comes with 3 crosswords and news from 4 days ago.
You might want to read up on this guy.
Oh thats a great idea… I know I’ll subscribe to a newspaper thats 50% garbage.
Don’t most people around 45 and under get up and grab a cup of coffee and flip on the computer to read news and e-mails for the price of an internet connection or less? Why go outside in my pjs to get a newspaper and pay for its subscription when I don’t have to?
Printed news media needs to rethink itself.
They are sort of like the land line telephone. Some of us have no need for a cell phone AND a land line phone at the same time… its just another bill. Why would I need both? I don’t.
Same thing… I can get my news off the internet.
What’s a newspaper?
Anything I read in the newspaper I usually read online 1 or 2 days before.
In all but the largest markets (which these newspapers are) the lo-cal newspaper is still by far the best if not only form of local news. If they have to go to 50/50 news advertising to pay for the thing so be it.
Depends. If they segregate the adverts to something that you can pull out and recycle right away, I’d keep on buying. If you have to page through 75 pages of regular newspaper for 32.5 pages of “news”, I’d bag it, and go with something else.
#8 – GigG – If they have to go to 50/50 news advertising to pay for the thing so be it.
Let me correct that for you… If they have to go to 50/50 news advertising to maximize profit for the thing so be it.
A real newspaper, delivered to your door, with which you can kick back on the couch, fold to your liking, spill coffee on without a short circuit, and most importantly, read on the pot, is in my view indispensable. You can’t do that with a laptop. And there IS something to be gained by having professionally content that just doesn’t happen online. The same holds true for a bookstore vs. Amazon. You happen across things in the bookstore that you would never bother to look for on a website.
Now, I live in Los Angeles. I’ve read the Times since I was in Junior High School back in the 1970s. I’ve been a paid subscriber for a couple of decades. But it gets thinner and thinner, with less useful content every year. The comics page (the best part!) has become a disgrace, particularly on Sunday. They nearly lost me when they dropped the television guide, but the Times is still, as of today, the best source of local news and has by far the best letters to the editor section and a few other features of any local rag.
But it makes one wonder. If the San Francisco Chronicle can survive, long after the death of its one redeeming feature (Herb Cean), what will happen to the Times?
My brother has switched to the Daily Breeze. I just might follow suit. Or maybe make a bigger dent in the stack of books that I’m trying to get through. Time and Zell will tell.
We have such papers here in Europe. They’re given away to commuters at no cost to them, skimmed between stations, then discarded. Like we’d actually PAY for a paper that was 50% advertising?
Is this a guy who just wants to maximize profits? They will be the death of newspapers! That would be like the Priesthood trying to do the same.
I’ll read the above links, but I don’t think newspapers should be run like regular investments.
If they don’t become more transparent and admit their biased agenda, they are just whistling on the way to their graveyard.
A lot of media is nearly 50% advertising.
Hello…McFLy…Are you in there???
The age of the newspaper is gone.
I think, at one point, newspapers got more revenue from classified ads than from any other type of ad in the newspaper.
Now craigslist has basically taken over the classified ads business (for free) and newspapers are scrambling to make up the lost revenue.
They are totally screwed.
I buy the Sunday paper just to read the adds. I want to see if the memory card, lappie, camera, usb drive etc. that I happen to be in the market for is cheaper at Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry’s etc. I will of course compare with online retailers.
Yesterday I took all the adds out of the paper and threw the news section out.
BTW- I use Plucker on my Palm TX to read the news when on the pot. A lappie gets toooo hot!
My lips get tired when I read!
[Stop it! – ed.]
Get over it.
It pains me to say it, but maybe Ballmer was right…
deep cuts and more advertising ? Sounds like the guy want printed web pages: little content per page, and cheapo redactors. Why pay for these ?
What I see as valuable ?
Redactors with real knowledge for one.
And enought of them to make a signicative picture of today world.
Dont sell the bullshit that interest X speeak for the gullible.
Let microfacts and chit-chat take few real state, we can get this in the web for free.
In less words, traditional media can beat the web in quality and density of information, but naturally cannot beat the web in variety, quantity nor prize.
>>If they don’t become more transparent and admit
>>their biased agenda, they are just whistling on the
>>way to their graveyard.
We’re not talking about right-wing rags with hidden agendas here, we’re talking about regular “main-stream” papers. They usually don’t HAVE an agenda. It’s that wing-nut shit like World Hate Daily that have the hidden agendas, but their subscribers will continue to pay no matter what the advertising ratio.
As someone who worked several years ago for a newspaper agency. Even in a college town. Students were very much getting away from printed news. Even then, the internet was just AOL and CNN. But the fact that the internet provided a news now availability started to set the tone for the news papers demise. I think we tend to not take the time to read a entire paper for news. We tend to be skimmers who pick and choose and rarely read complete articles unless they really interest us. I myself find sites that give me the highlights the best.
>>We tend to be skimmers who pick and choose
>>and rarely read complete articles
Yes, but it’s very easy to skim through an entire paper newspaper. Try skimming through the entire online Sunday NYT, or a daily online WSJ. Not so easy.
It really depends on what they get rid of. There is so much in the traditional newspaper that is pretty useless. Except for local sports ESPN does a better job than the [a[er can ever do. Is there really any reason to put stock prices in the paper? Get rid of the horoscopes, tv schedules, and advice columns and focus on the things papers actual do well? If they do that then it is a good idea. If they cut down on actual news reporting then this is a bad thing.
Electronic paper just can’t get here fast enough. And, no, Kindle is nowhere near being “it.”
RBG
The best scam on the planet, is getting people to buy propaganda and making a profit while at it.
Sheeple are so damned stupid. They actually pay for their own fleecing.
LOL!!!
Seems to me that 50% of the “news” is already a commercial. Sports news is just a huge commercial for sports franchises. Medical breakthru’s are mainly commercials for the drugmakers. And the always announce a “new study” about what’s good for you (like wine, coffee, or chocolate) whenever their sales are down. And my favorite, the latest crash test results, that mainly promote the largest, most expensive vehicles. Gas mileage and reliability, having become a dead issue (until now).
What these publishing mogal won’t consider is any reduction in their own salaries. If anything, I’ll bet the papers’ CEOs and top execs, will get another raise soon. Or more million dollar bonuses. The real reason that foreign competition is beating them is that their CEOs are being paid a King’s ransom. And the internet gets the same job done, without their overpaid butts being in charge.