Having grown up in Bama, I will say this...almost every newspaper in the state is on marginal operations, and making nothing near what they did in the 1980s.
I suspect that they’ve begun to ask themselves....who are our readers and why are they disenchanted with our reporting over the past two or three decades? Between crime, corruption, stupid political agendas, lack of stories about the homefront in Bama, and an overload on NCAA football stories....there’s just not much reason to buy a daily Bama paper.
The Birmingham News seems to be going under. They have laid off so many people and had to move from their former building to a smaller one.
They have concentrated on NOT reporting on Obama’s stumbles. Local folks have to read the Daily Mail in the UK just to find out what the president is up to!
And they have made a conscious effort to put in heavy rotation, an almost wall to wall policy of “reporting” on homosexuality. If it’s gay, it plays.
And they use their Pulitzer winner to write almost exclusively about pets. He’s a stone cold liberal and his skills have gone down mightily in the past few years, but they best they can get from the guys is dog stories all the time?
For a while there, every time you opened up the paper it was cross-dressing, “my brother is gay and he’s normal,” and feature after feature on the Prancing Elites.
They are currently obsessed with the cross dresser from Alabama who is in “Orange is the New Black.” As if that’s the only person from Alabama who is doing anything worth reporting?
So this guy writing about open carry is a big deal.
A couple of thoughts, this would be the first time liberals thought through something if they think this will bring readers back.
The other thought was that maybe now is a time for a good conservative newspaper but then looking at the lack of enthusiastic financial support here on FR, I don’t think I would invest the money in a conservative newspaper business.