Longtime subscribers to the Kansas City Star probably remember its Monday editions as the lightest of the week…
Light in weight and light in content. That’s because the Star fields a skeleton newsroom crew on weekends and which usually results in precious little meaningful local news content.
However, now that all of the weekday editions of the Star have all shrunk in size owing to cutbacks, it’s gotten far less noticeable because they’re all pretty small as a rule. And while, today’s “A Section” is just eight pages – that includes the national, local, business and opinion sections – the addition of a 10 pages NCAA Tournament special section gives the newspaper the kind of heft it used to have before everything went to heck in 2008.
Ditto for Monday’s Lawrence Journal World which – ad inserts aside – is mostly light as a feather.
Today’s Journal World though is the first to include a USA Today section.
And just like that, an otherwise mundane Journal World is awash in national, business, travel and feature news – well presented, well written, interesting news.
So instead of getting stuck with front page stories about about an aging, elementary school mental health professional with fully tattooed, “lunch lady” arms and a plan to attract retirees to Lawrence, readers learned that the dude charged with shooting two Ferguson police officers got nabbed and that high levels of lead in artificial turf is poisoning children.
The Biebs
And that the Secret Service may hire the son of a former Secret Service director and the subject of an HBO documentary was arrested on murder charges.
And there’s more – a lot more.
Did you know that a protest against robots and artificial intelligence broke out at the tres hip South by Southwest music fest? Or that large anchors pulling out of older malls is triggering dirt naps? Or that the latest on “data guru” Nate Silver is he’s into predicting on time flights? Or how about that “space invaders” – as in fat folks – are sprawling into neighboring travelers seats?
There’s also an interesting breakdown of the weekend box office, a story about what’s next for Mad Men‘s Elisabeth Moss and a smattering of entertainment tidbits ranging from Justin Bieber‘s upcoming roast on Comedy Central to Prince Charles four day visit to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta.
No two ways about it, as an unexpected freebie, the USA Today section is a win-win for Journal World readers.
The $64 million question: Who’s gonna pay for it and how long can it last?
Because outside of a full page ad from United Way thanking donors, sponsors and volunteers, there’s zero ad revenue in the new section. So unless the addition results in a ton of new subscribers and or advertisers in other sections of the Journal World the bottom line is going to take a red ink hit.
Which would be unfortunate, because it’s a heckuva addition.
Naturally I called one of the town’s top Republicans this morning to get his take on the new section.
“What section?” he asked. “I didn’t see any new section, but I went through the paper really fast this morning. Maybe they left mine out.”
USA Today has saved the seafood industry in Lawrence, Kansas, giving people something to wrap catfish with. It has helped out local mobs and syndicates, giving them something to wrap body parts with, so they can get their messages across. Finally it has bought the Lawrence Journal World a reprieve from the reaper, provided it does not financially cost the paper too much to provide another paper to supplement its meager existence. As I said, the newspaper is dead; long live KC Confidential.
look at this guy, probably reviews the NYT best sellers by weight