Enquirer Layoffs: The Tally So Far

[vaticanplum]

Can you provide links to some blogs you read that have original reporting? I'm always curious to see those, and I myself don't come across them very often, unless they are extremely focused niche news blogs.

Nick Denton's empire. A lot of regurgitation, a fair amount of speculation, but some original reporting too.

Those blogs have a ton of faults and are not what they once were, but they deserve a lot of credit for filling a niche, doing it successfully and in a cutting-edge way, and running with it -- and then doing it for niche after niche after niche. Mind you, if I had to get all my news from Denton's outlets, I'd probably leave the planet.

I don't think newspapers will die. I do think they need to step it up and get better at what they do to still be relevant and appealing. The market is choked with options; standards have to be higher than they used to in order to compete. I still think the New York Times is the best news source available by almost any standard.

[Eric_the_Red]

Why can't newspapers just become news websites? You can still have local news, journalists, investigations, classifieds, advertising, etc. Eliminate the costs of production, distribution, etc. and I think you would save a lot of jobs for a lot of qualified people.

[Jpup]

Why can't newspapers just become news websites? You can still have local news, journalists, investigations, classifieds, advertising, etc. Eliminate the costs of production, distribution, etc. and I think you would save a lot of jobs for a lot of qualified people.

business is about making money, not about saving jobs. I also tend to forget that sometimes.

[redsmetz]

Timely email from my sister-in-law. Her husband just left the Cleveland Plain Dealer earlier this year (or towards year end). He's now doing free lance investigative work and was interviewed with two other former journalist from the Cleveland area on their NPR station. Here's a link to the story:

http://www.wcpn.org/WCPN/news/26985/

[redsmetz]

Not if you are a capitalist who wants to make a profit. This ain't socialism...

It's not necessarily socialism to make your product available on a wide basis and sometimes in a free form. It's just a question of where do you derive your revenue. Papers and magazines have always had some gratis streams.

I think about my kids in college where the papers were always available in their dorms for free (at least at OSU and the Univ. of Dayton). The idea is to introduce the kids to be regular readers and then ultimately have them as subscribers throughout their life. Plus, I believe, those numbers go towards their readership counts (someone correct me if that's not right) and that can bolster advertising revenues which are, at times, based on circulation numbers. The same is true of magazines, another struggling business, but it's why they can sell subscriptions at reduced rates through drivers or sales offers etc.

And then you have weeklys such as City Beat which have always been free and based on advertising revenues. Now they're struggling too because ad buys are down, but you get the picture.

[redsmetz]

business is about making money, not about saving jobs. I also tend to forget that sometimes.

One aspect is certainly to make a profit, but a fuller capitalist economy is about creating employment for a wide spectrum of the population. It's not solely about maker the owners wealthy. If workers aren't making money, then products and services can't be purchased and it all goes down the pipes. Hence our current struggles. It should be, hopefully, and "both and" model. While you will always have that pendulum swinging around, we kid ourselves if we think it's only about making money.

I've run my own business now for thirty years. I used to jest that I really was a socialist, but I've come to an appreciation that I've been an entrepeneur on my own since 1979 (literally just celebrated 30 years at the first of the month). I've waked away from business because they had someone else who provided the same service who they were satisfied with. I remember one prospective customer who couldn't believe it and I told him, "If he's providing you with the service you required, I'll go look for someone else." I don't want someone walking off with my accounts, why should I take one away from someone else? There's plenty of fish in the sea.

As a Catholic and a business owner, I'm interested in reading the Pope's newest encyclical that just came out on the economy. One pundit said it calls for "an ethics which is people-centered." I'm inclined to agree.

Long answer to saying, it's not solely about "making money" - those efforts involve people employed in some way or another. History has taught us that can change and people adapt, but it's still always about people.

[Redsfaithful]

That's a lot of people, it seems many think tough doody... I find that some what elitist IMO.

The folks who can't afford it need to be included, don't cha think?

Newspapers should be non-profit, for this reason and many others. But I'm not exactly holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

Media could also be government funded, it works for the BBC. But I'm not going to hold my breath on that either.

I really don't care about the Enquirer or papers like it. They abandoned their duties to the public long ago. (This doesn't mean I don't feel terrible for those losing their jobs, and it's not the average reporters fault, this is on Gannett and the like.) The Enquirer in particular has been worthless for quite awhile now. In high school I was a voracious newspaper reader, but the quality has just gotten worse and worse since then to the point where most papers now are just a sports page and a bunch of wire stories. I'm just hopeful a better model that does a better job of informing the public of things that actually matter will rise up out of all of this.

[reds1869]

Media could also be government funded, it works for the BBC. But I'm not going to hold my breath on that either.

Yes, because government funded press is the perfect recipe for keeping those in power honest.

Disclaimer: I actually love the Beeb, but they are far from unbiased in their reporting.

[BCubb2003]

It sounds like those here who still want the news on paper would like a Wall Street Journal for Cincinnati: traditional, authoritative, not too flashy, with good writing. To pick an example, I could go for more regular economics and sabre-based reporting on the Reds. There are probably other areas of the community that could benefit from that kind of approach. Someone mentioned the Wall Street Journal with comics. I could see really making that a selling point, maybe a page of classic comics and a page of cutting edge comics, all run large. The newsprint is expensive, but if you're going to devote the space to comics, make them worth running. But that's just me.

Then, you have to make decisions: Are you going to run boxscores and game reports? Stock listings and TV listings? Are you going to cover high schools sports? Just Cincinnati news or the suburbs too? Is it really going to be an approach like the Wall Street Journal or The Economist, or would it get down to neighborhood festivals and Little Leagues? How many readers do you figure you have for your product? How many people will it take to produce it? How much would you have to charge?

I really am curious how you all would go about building The RedsZone Journal-Enquirer, as an exercise. Or would you take your money and buy a share of the Reds?

[*BaseClogger*]

Newspapers should be non-profit, for this reason and many others. But I'm not exactly holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

Media could also be government funded, it works for the BBC. But I'm not going to hold my breath on that either.

I'm just going to say I strongly disagree...

[RFS62]

It sounds like those here who still want the news on paper would like a Wall Street Journal for Cincinnati: traditional, authoritative, not too flashy, with good writing. To pick an example, I could go for more regular economics and sabre-based reporting on the Reds. There are probably other areas of the community that could benefit from that kind of approach. Someone mentioned the Wall Street Journal with comics. I could see really making that a selling point, maybe a page of classic comics and a page of cutting edge comics, all run large. The newsprint is expensive, but if you're going to devote the space to comics, make them worth running. But that's just me.

Then, you have to make decisions: Are you going to run boxscores and game reports? Stock listings and TV listings? Are you going to cover high schools sports? Just Cincinnati news or the suburbs too? Is it really going to be an approach like the Wall Street Journal or The Economist, or would it get down to neighborhood festivals and Little Leagues? How many readers do you figure you have for your product? How many people will it take to produce it? How much would you have to charge?

I really am curious how you all would go about building The RedsZone Journal-Enquirer, as an exercise. Or would you take your money and buy a share of the Reds?

I haven't read it in a while, but the Christian Science Monitor used to be a world class paper. Not much to do with religion, just excellent reporting and in-depth feature stories on topics from all over the world.

I'm with those who will mourn the demise of the newspaper industry as paper after paper downsizes and/or fails in this short attention span universe.

[Unassisted]

Why can't newspapers just become news websites? You can still have local news, journalists, investigations, classifieds, advertising, etc. Eliminate the costs of production, distribution, etc. and I think you would save a lot of jobs for a lot of qualified people.

I heard a newspaper industry expert explain that a newspaper's web site generates 1/6 as much ad revenue as the newspaper itself. With 1/6 of the revenue, there wouldn't be enough $$$ to pay the staff.

That's typically the case, but he does periodically break stories also.

Drudge has a staff of two, counting Drudge himself. He breaks stories by breaking embargoes on stories that are published by the major wire services, as well as by getting tips from reporter friends at mainstream outlets. Without the wire services and the mainstream media, there wouldn't be much left for Drudge to report.

[reds1869]

I haven't read it in a while, but the Christian Science Monitor used to be a world class paper. Not much to do with religion, just excellent reporting and in-depth feature stories on topics from all over the world.

I'm with those who will mourn the demise of the newspaper industry as paper after paper downsizes and/or fails in this short attention span universe.

The daily print Monitor ceased publication. It is now a weekly magazine. Shame, it was a great paper.

[Sea Ray]

Newspapers should be non-profit, for this reason and many others. But I'm not exactly holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

Non profit means you're breaking even. Most papers need to cut a great deal to get to the break even point. NY Times is 100s of million in the red.

[dougdirt]

But without real news sources like newspapers those sites won't exist. That means there is a need for hard journalism in the market, which also means as long as newspapers make smart business decisions they have a way to make it through this...

Thats probably not true. Those same reporters would just be working for online news sources at that point, or even magazines. Reporters can work for non newspapers and still do the exact same job that they do now. Their work will just be printed online or in magazines (be it in print or online).