Posted on 12/15/2007 4:42:31 AM PST by abb
USA Today will no longer be printed in Hawaii and its distribution will be significantly scaled back after Dec. 28.
The nation's largest circulation newspaper, which had been printed and distributed by The Honolulu Advertiser for three years, will stop delivering to hotel rooms, subscribers and hundreds of news racks around the Islands at the end of the month.
Instead, newspapers will be flown in from the West Coast every weekday afternoon for sale at a limited number of locations, mostly at airports.
The move was made to cut costs. Advertising revenue at USA Today was down 6.1 percent in October from the previous year and the newspaper recently said it would cut 45 newsroom positions.
"USA Today is always looking for ways to be more efficient and in doing so we made the decision to stop printing in Hawaii," said a spokeswoman, Heidi Zimmerman.
USA Today has daily circulation of 2.3 million and eliminating the Hawaii papers will only cost it about 12,000 copies.
According to the newspaper's most recent circulation statement, it was selling about 3,600 papers a day at newsstands and to subscribers and an additional 8,300 papers were classified as "other paid," which are usually deeply discounted papers sold to hotels and airlines.
USA Today executives had big hopes to tap into Hawaii's tourist market when the paper began being printed on the Advertiser's new full-color press in November 2004, but circulation fell far short of their goals, despite aggressive marketing deals made with hotels.
The withdrawal of USA Today could provide a slight circulation bump for local newspapers, some of which were displaced when hotels signed on with the national publication. But any gains wouldn't likely make up for the broader loss of 2 to 5 percent in paid circulation reported by Hawaii newspapers in the past year.
Both USA Today and the Advertiser are owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI) of McLean, Va.
"There was a land of Publishers and Editors called the Newspaper Business... Here in this pretty world Journalism took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Reporters and their Enablers, of Anonymous Sources and of Stringers... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization Gone With the Wind..."
With apologies to Margaret Mitchell...
ping
Lucky you live Hawaii!
What is a newspaper??
The good news keeps on coming....not from usa today
“USA Today executives had big hopes to tap into Hawaii’s tourist market when the paper began being printed on the Advertiser’s new full-color press in November 2004, but circulation fell far short of their goals, despite aggressive marketing deals made with hotels.”
The last thing I want in Hawaii is a reminder of the problems on the mainland
Good point, I lived there for 4 years and I never knew what the hell was going happening in the mainland or in the world. Plus you don't want to think too much about politics too much in such a corrupt RAT run state. Yeah, I know the Gov. is Republican.
Regards
This is big news!
Why would USA today spend boatloads of money shipping 12,000 papers to Hawaii when probably 50 % of them just tossed out by the hotel staff every day.
WHy would you do it in the first place?
It's a propaganda mechanism for democrats and a cheap source of material for lining a parrot's cage.
Now it will be shipping the product, however, but it will probably be a lot less than 12,000 papers.
I expect they’ve got a sweetheart deal with airlines to ship them at a sharply discounted rate. Airplanes fly to Hawaii every day anyway. A pallet or two of newspapers shouldn’t cost that much.
Their Los Angeles or San Francisco printing plants could turn out those issues in a flash, much cheaper than setting up the Hawaii press to run a small batch of a different paper.
You can be assured Gannett has penciled this thing to death to find which is more economical. Gannett has always been notorious about penny-pinching.
I'd like to thank USA Today for this contribution to global warming. :)
Great news!!!!!!!!!
Now if they'll just stop on the mainland, too. I've note that when they leave stacks of the rag in hotel lobbies, the stacks tend to remain until removed sometime during the day.
Here's a hint: They can save money by stop printing articles about the WNBA, Michelle Wie, etc...
Do what Grampa Dave does, “Just say No to free USALIES TODAY!”
Makes us wonder what it costs to ship these piles of fishwrap. Their carbon footprint in a week or two might exceed Al Gorebull Warming's.
You wouldn’t believe the carbon footprint and all other ramifications involved in papermaking and newspaper printing. First you have the logging. Then the transportation. Then you have to chip the logs. Then cook the chips into pulp. Then wash the “liquor” from the pulp. Then you have to bleach the pulp. Dioxins are used for bleach - DIOXINS!! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!
Then you have to dry the pulp into sheets which requires lots of energy. The paper has to be transported to printers. And God knows what kind of chemicals go into ink. Then you have to transport the newspapers to the customers.
I know all about papermaking. I’ve been in and around the wood products biz for 40 years.
All in all, a newspaper is much, much less “green” than pixels on a computer screen.
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