Posted on 08/31/2008 3:57:52 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
If you are wondering why the stories in your local newspapers are starting to look so similar to other newspapers, it might be because they are following the new business model of South Florida newspapers: eliminating competition. All the major South Florida newspapers, Miami Herald, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel (now called SunSentinel), and Palm Beach Post have had big staff cutbacks recently. So who is left to cover the news? The skeleton crews still working at the newspapers don't have the capability so they came up with a solution: pool their resources and share their stories. A story in Friday's Sun-Sentinel, I mean SunSentinel, explains the brave new world of journalism (emphasis mine):
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
I love it when they have to report on Cuban events - If they printed a word of what the Gringo reporters on their staff REALLY thought, they'd be tarred, feathered, and run out of town strapped to the bottom of a truck.!
Straight out of Atlas Shrugged.
Amazing, thoroughly amazing,I don’t suppose the New Media had anything to do with this did it?
My prediction: We will end up with 3 large newspapers and lots of suburban newsies.
Ping to you.
News stories have been generic for years, one of the big reasons that newspapers are failing. It all began when they forgot was a newspaper is, and tried to make it what they wanted it to be, which is not what sells.
To be successful, a newspaper has always had to be local, timely, give the customer what they wanted, and make money from subscriptions, not advertising. In this way, newspapers should still have a similar business model to what they had in the 1940s.
If I was to start a newspaper today, which I might because the competition is dying out, my biggest concern would be printing and distribution, because they are the hard part. Getting the newspapers to the people who want to buy them.
I wouldn’t hire “journalists” who had graduated from some university “journalism” department, because newspapers don’t need “journalists”, they need “reporters”. And a hard working reporter with a high school education is better than 10 journalists who think they are special because they have a college degree.
And reporters need three things. Shoe leather, a telephone, and a company moped to get around town faster than by bus. The way reporters are paid is by giving good copy. They also get docked for screwing up. They are subcontractors, like exotic dancers.
The news wire companies are dead as well. AP UPI, Rooters, etc. are a corrupt and dead model. But this shouldn’t stop any newspaper from making its own news wire off the Internet. All they need are original sources willing to trade news.
For local news, reporters should be assigned territories, that they work, talking to grandmothers and small businessmen until everybody in the neighborhood knows who to call when they have local news. Two hundred ears and eyes and that reporter will know what’s going down. Minority neighborhoods get reporters they will talk to.
The best reporters get the crime and fire beat and develops informants and leaks, official and unofficial. They also get the whistle blowers and paranoids.
The top female reporter is the person everybody wants on their social calendar. She is also the editor of the Style and Culture section that every maven must read to know what is “in”. Her draw is women and families which is half the readers, so she is very important to the paper.
Advertising today is too much for a daily. At least one syndicate has realized this, so is slashing its advertising to news ratio to 1:1. The big bucks can still be made or saved by offering an advertising supplement just to subscribers who want it, for a small discount in the cost of their papers. Those willing to pay more to not get ads would likely never use them anyway, saving a bunch of money.
are there not anti-trust rules to prevent this?
seems if the three pool resources they kill any competition in their blue zone turfs.
Yep. That's why a word like "gravitas" exposes the sameness when they all use it simultaneously.
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