Many Small Papers Are Tanking As Year Begins (Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)

The way things are going in the newspaper business, it may not be too long before the big papers will be just about the only ones left. Two longtime newspapers have closed since the end of 2006, and many others have undertaken layoffs and other cost-saving measures. In recent years, hundreds of afternoon dailies have vanished, or become morning papers.

Here in Southern California, the papers owned by Dean Singleton have virtually all laid off numerous employees. At the Orange County Register, the story has been told about the unfortunate newsman summoned in on his day off to a meeting, only to be told when he got there he was fired.

Singleton is trying to follow in the footsteps of the Tribune Co.'s inept former CEO Dennis FitzSimons, who was laid off himself when Sam Zell became the Tribune owner. But unlike FitzSimons, it is doubtful that Singleton could leave with a multi-million severance. His papers probably do not have that kind of nest egg. The Singleton story is one of a squalid little man buying a bunch of squalid little newspapers, and then running them further into the ground. He may end up like the squirrel, living off nuts in the park.

The Cincinnati Post, its circulation having dropped by 75%, went out of business after 127 years of publication Dec. 31, and the Kent County Journal of Kent, Washington, a Seattle suburb, will close down Jan. 21. It has been Washington state's 8th largest paper.

In California, the story is almost as bad. The San Jose Mercury News is a shadow of its former self. Two big layoffs in recent months have pared the staff by 17%. One wonders whether a Silicon Valley edition of the Los Angeles Times wouldn't be more of a success.

The San Francisco Chronicle has laid off many, too, and recent word there was that the newspaper is losing $50,000 a month.

Here in Los Angeles, the Daily News in the San Fernando Valley, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune and the Long Beach Press-Telegram have all retreated from respectable journalism, laying off workers, cutting features and amalgamating many of their busness functions. These are all Singleton-owned newspapers.

What are the causes? Ads are way down, and certain categories of ads, like classified, are approaching the vanishing point. Owners are unwilling to invest, fearing further reverses. There is a general ecnomic downturn, the whole housing industry has tanked. And more people are getting their news from the Internet rather than the daily press.

I'm certainly aware of the tendency toward more use of the Internet. Even with the papers I subscribe to, the L.A. Times and the New York Times, I increasingly read many stories late the night before online. It's not as pleasurable as reading the print edition, but it helps me do this blog early many mornings.

There certainly is a call for serious journalism, but that is being provided by the big newspapers, struggling too, but usually not to the same extent.

In many cases, the content of the L.A. Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, is as good as it's ever been. All of these papers also have increasingly successful Web sites, where readership is constantly growing, and ads are being sold in ever larger numbers.

There is, I believe, hope for these papers. But for the Daily News, the Register, even the San Diego Tribune, where there have been recent serious layoffs, I wonder.

We can't disdain our suffering colleagues, and tell them to eat cake. It's certainly no laughing matter, and all we can hope is that many of those laid off can find lucrative careers in other fields.

There certainly is a call for serious journalism, but that is being provided by the big newspapers, struggling too, but usually not to the same extent. In many cases, the content of the L.A. Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, is as good as it's ever been. All of these papers also have increasingly successful Web sites, where readership is constantly growing, and ads are being sold in ever larger numbers.

Perhaps a bit of whistling past the graveyard regarding the enconomic fortunes of big journalism given recent layoffs at the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times coupled with the Washington Post's decision that it now wants to be an "Education and Media" Company (in that order) when it grows up.

After having had home delivery of the San Diego Union-Trib for a good number of years, I got tired of seeing a story promoting the gay rights agenda on their front page almost every other day and I canceled for good.

Now I subscribe to the North [San Diego] County Times on a daily basis and I see a story promoting the open borders agenda on it's front page about every third day. If it wasn't for the shopping coupons my wife gleans from the NCT every week, it'd be history too.

When Singleton bought the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, it was losing a little over a million dollars a month. That bleed was eliminated in 8 months. Buoyed by this success, he then systematically destroyed the collections department, and gosh, revenues died.

It was near universal that a lot of large small businesses would be ninety days behind in their payments, and you’d make a nice call, and they’d catch their account up, and three months later you’d be on the phone to them. Singleton’s plan was to stop making those calls and sell off uncollected debt at the sixty day mark, usually for pennies on the dollar.

Whereas the previous practice would keep existing customers, the new practice traded short term debt conversion for loss of long term customers. When ad revenues started falling, he increased the size of the advertising department. When they fell a second time, he slashed reporting.

What no newspaper gets is that they’re blocking the door for local advertising. Their arcane rate cards are mystifying mumbo jumbo for most advertisers. Every time the Los Angeles Times or the SGVT does a special section with a flat rate advertisement, they fill up quickly - it’s clear - you’re paying $40 for this size ad, you buy it for three weeks, you get the fourth week free. And as soon as these sections fill up, someone kills the section because ‘it’s cutting into the advertising revenue,’ or ‘it was attracting advertising of an inappropriate type’ - IE: cutting into the advertising department’s ad revenue.

Selling advertising is dead easy - with a little work, you can fill up virtually any size publication. You just have to end the insanity of the rate card, and be clear with your customers. The only problem is when you do that, you cut off any national advertising, period. Ad agencies will not deal with flat rate advertising, they want everything spelled out by the column inch, detailed in what their discount rates are for 4th insertions, pickup discounts, etc.

Yup, the SGVT, the Pasadena Star News, the Daily Bulletin, the Orange Country Register, the Long Beach Press-Telegram, the Daily News - they’re all dying, and all could be resurrected in a matter of weeks. They’d just have to let go of the dogma that’s been keeping them from success, and that’s just not going to happen.

This particular passage from The Press and America seems apropos to new media.

The effect of the advent of the printing press upon life in Western Europe was tremendous. Dr. Elizabeth Eisenstein, in her probing study, I assembled evidence to support her thesis that the spread of printing in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ripped apart the social and structural fabric of life in Western Europe and reconnected it in new ways that gave shape to modem patterns. The availability of printed materials made possible societal, cultural, familial, and industrial changes facilitating the Renaissance, the Reformaation, and the scientific revolution.
How could movable type make such a change in thinking and habits accepted for centuries? First, it made it possible to produce literature and printed materials cheaply enough to reach the masses. Each copy of a hand-produced book or newsletter cost as much to make as the last, and took as long. The printing press reduced the unit cost, and produced copies in bulk. This meant that knowledge was no longer the exclusive property of the privileged classes. Availability of cheap printed reading matter encouraged the growth of literacy. Learning to read is likely to make a man or woman curious, simply because matters are brought into focus that have never been imagined. As the Middle Ages ended, various tendencies broke the crust of fixed custom and ushered in an age of discussion.

Selling advertising is dead easy - with a little work, you can fill up virtually any size publication. You just have to end the insanity of the rate card, and be clear with your customers. The only problem is when you do that, you cut off any national advertising, period. Ad agencies will not deal with flat rate advertising, they want everything spelled out by the column inch, detailed in what their discount rates are for 4th insertions, pickup discounts, etc.

This is the second time in as many weeks that ad agencies got portrayed as Luddites. Boriss also recently mentioned ad agencies as a probable cause for advertisers paying more for less.

... What incentive does an agency have to propose more productive plans for their clients’ ad spending if these threaten to reduce both total ad expenditures and this cozy business model — for instance, a plan that shifts funds to lower cost, more highly targeted, and more measurable ads on the Internet? Not much.
So when you read in the NY Post and at BuzzMachine that advertisers are paying for more and more network TV spots, at higher and higher rates, because of fewer and fewer network viewers, using plans developed by their ad agencies, it makes one wonder. Just whose side are ad agencies on? ...

How could movable type make such a change in thinking and habits accepted for centuries? First, it made it possible to produce literature and printed materials cheaply enough to reach the masses. Each copy of a hand-produced book or newsletter cost as much to make as the last, and took as long. The printing press reduced the unit cost, and produced copies in bulk. This meant that knowledge was no longer the exclusive property of the privileged classes. Availability of cheap printed reading matter encouraged the growth of literacy. Learning to read is likely to make a man or woman curious, simply because matters are brought into focus that have never been imagined. As the Middle Ages ended, various tendencies broke the crust of fixed custom and ushered in an age of discussion.

It is my considered opinion that the invention of the World Wide Web will have much the same impact as did the printing press.

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