The sky isn’t quite falling yet, but we may be getting close…
There’s little doubt that rapidly advancing technology is taking a huge toll on any number of old school industries. Take the greeting card biz, with Hallmark shuttering its Topeka operation not two years ago and looking to lop off 200 more heads in KC as we speak.
The Kansas City Star and The Pitch are embroiled in frightening free falls with no end in sight. Free falls costing hundreds, if not thousands of jobs, but that also results in turmoil among business advertisers that have traditionally relied on print publications to reach their customer bases.
I’m sure somebody out there still buys greeting cards, but with rare exception I can’t tell you who – certainly not my 18 year-old daughters or me.
So as we await the death knell of The Pitch and wonder aloud how long some of us will continue picking up plastic wrapped newspapers with day old and syndicated stories from larger publications like the New York Times, where’re we actually headed?
The addition of a daily USA Today section in the Lawrence Journal World and dozens of other newspapers across the country might just hint at the solution.
While choking out six to eight extra pages a day with little to no advertising would appear to make zero sense – especially to small town rags like the Journal World fighting for their very lives – after only a couple weeks, the effect here in Lawrence has been dazzling.
Suddenly, instead of subscribing to the only game in town for local news – albeit a weak as a kitten effort – a cornucopia of news and stories from USA Today has transformed the Journal World into something worth spending some time with.
Take today’s newspaper…
With newsroom-less weekends long being the norm, readers of both the Journal World and the Star have grown accustomed to news light Mondays.
But courtesy of USA Today‘s insert, there’s life after boring front page stories like the one today about a local educator who “loves people” and “loves to help.” And another front pager quoting an area hog farmer about what a great boon the Lawrence Farmers Market has been. Or that a local Knights of Columbus building that has hosted Saturday night geezer dances is closing.
Not that those stories aren’t interesting to some, but not for the entire front page.
And it doesn’t get much better inside with headlines about a “Kansas inventor” hoping his “gadget saves farmers valuable time.” Or”How to extend the life of your home paint job.”
I’m serious.
Skitter past those eight pages to USA Today‘s eight pages, and suddenly you’re in Kenya on a somber Easter Sunday. Or you’re reading about Rolling Stone magazine taking it up the you-know-what for it’s bogus campus rape story last year. You’re reminded that the three days of terror in Paris three months ago is being forgotten even as serious threats remain. And that breast milk sold online “may be tainted with cow’s milk.”
That’s USA Today’s front page and those aren’t tiny news shorts.
They’re well written and researched works of journalism, as are inside stories about how Ferguson, Missouri voters may be poised to elect as many as three black councilmen for the first time in the city’s history. Or Chicago’s contentious mayoral runoff election and the Pope praising the Iran nuke deal, the Japanese stock market coming back to life, how auto manufacturers are stuffing as many as six cameras into new cars. And how the recession may have permanently dialed back business travel perks and a number of highly regarded television shows are fighting for their lives.
To name a few…
Which on further thought, may point to a future where the New York Times and/or USA Today might provide the basic written news and marry that with out of work local journalists to localize the content and provide a place for print advertisers to reach their target markets.
That’s a bit of an oversimplification because for all we now know printed pubs may well be the vinyl records of the future. However that may be a long way off.
The fact is, that USA Today‘s approach isn’t so much to regurgitate the basic news everybody already gets online or on television, they take it to a higher level by being more in depth, providing perspective, and coming up with slants and news gems that don’t often make headlines.
The main virtue of local newspapers is to provide local news reporting that national news providers don’t cover.
In days gone by, local newspapers also provided national and world news and the current keepers of the Fourth Estate can’t being themselves to stop doing that and focus more on local content. They’re still trying to go both ways, be all things to all people.
Probably because many older readers who still subscribe spend little to no time online.
Marry USA Today’s content with local news and sports (gossip even) and you’d have something.
Or the consumer will just go to the better product.
When you have an inferior product and juice it up with someone else’s product it can hasten your demise. People will just go to the better product.
Back in the 50s Indian tried this by adding Royal Enfield bikes rebadged as Indians. People just went to the Enfield dealerships.
News is a commodity now. In the commodity business if you are the top one 0r two business you will prosper. If you have a niche you can prosper.
But if you are just in the business you will struggle to exist.
The problem with merely going to “the better product” is that while it’s far and away better, it’s not local.
And if you live in Kansas City or Lawrence, if you don’t read the Journal World or Star, you’re not going to know most of what is going on locally.
For all their deficiencies newspapers are still the only game in town in that regard.
I do think that some readers – having been exposed to USA Today – may opt to subscribe and get the entire newspaper. At which point some, may opt to stick with the better product. The trade off being they’ll be mostly in the dark about the basic local information the Journal World still provides.
One factor leading to my point is people have and continue to move for jobs. I know the folks who transferred from other cities didn’t read the Philadelphia Inquirer, Bulletin or Daily News. They opted for USA Today.
The Star carries very little neighborhood specific news today.
You and I see newspapers and the news through a different lens than Joe Sixpack.
“Or that a local Knights of Columbus building that has hosted Saturday night geezer dances is closing.”
There is a certain geezer yuk yuk shack owner crying in his mound of fine Efferdent powder over this news.
Likely from being a sentimental sap, my kids always get birthday cards. Still do Christmas, Valentines, but admittedly that’s about it.
Yeah and you listen to The Bridge…
Face it, you’re just an old softie, Paul
Bought my last card 20-years-ago. We still exchange cards but from ones we have on hand. Never sign, just include a little note.
Recycling works.
Figured Old Man Hall had enough money.
No one owes anyone a job. It’s all about the bottom line. It’s a fact of life. Sometimes instead of dumping all the employees … companies close.
There isn’t much sorrow for the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs since 2008 — I have no compassion for business who can’t make it including the newspaper industry — although, I’m sure most principles will ensure that they get as much money as possible.
Buggy whips are no longer needed, soon newspapers will go away. The print media has forsaken printing news and became agenda focused. Good riddance.
They do need a wake up call in that regard, Jack…
The Star and Journal World both – the Star especially – still act as if it’s the 1960s and it doesn’t matter what they do or write – they know what’s best – and readers need to learn from their sermons.
Their points of view are seldom unbiased and conservative thinking takes a distant back seat at best.
They just can’t seem to turn the corner on the realities of the day and provide a more balanced approach to news and opinion reporting.
Little by little, they’re phasing out the old guard – the Watergate Generation, as I like to refer to them – but the problem is systemic.
It’s going to take probably all new ownership by companies not wedded to the current print journalism model and sweeping change in the newsroom.
In other words, they’ve still got a long way to go.
The relentless boosterism in the Journal-World does get a bit old, but Chad Lawhorn has been doing some outstanding investigative reporting into the Rock Chalk Park/KUEA/Compton/Fritzel fiasco – from cracked concrete, fudged finances, and subpar construction (as noted by an independent inspector hired in lieu of city inspectors who couldn’t make it out that day), to news of a federal corruption investigation – on the front page of Sunday’s paper.
I agree about Lawhorn, H Luce…
Unfortunately, his aw shucks, hayseed schtick diminishes his ability to fully play the role you describe him as playing.
He needs to decide if he’s a standup comic wannabe or a truth teller.
Hard to have it both ways.
For those interested: “Jose R. Torres Drywall was used as a subcontractor by Fritzel’s Bliss Sports LC, Edward Frizell, an attorney for Fritzel and Bliss Sports, said in a written statement.
Last month, the drywall company and its owner, Jose Torres-Garcia, were named as central figures in a federal indictment that alleges Torres served as a financial intermediary to process about $13 million worth of payments made to undocumented workers on drywall crews in the greater Kansas City area.
“During the time Jose R. Torres Drywall was providing subcontractor services on Rock Chalk Park, Bliss Sports was unaware of any of the irregularities mentioned in the recent indictment of Jose R. Torres Drywall,” Frizell said in his statement.”
It might help the moribund Star to go and do likewise although I’m afraid it may have lost its credibility – what a fall from the old days when it was a real newspaper.
Ooops, left off the reference: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2015/apr/05/company-center-alleged-money-laundering-undocument/
Thanks, H Luce
The Star’s inevitable diminishing into a speed-read USA Today-lite product was easily fortold shortly after McClatchy shot its wad .
The only question now is whether that will be enough to improve the product.
I’ve got a couple ideas I’ll share with you later today, Nick
Most of us remember that the morning contribution to Kansas City news was the Times. The Star was an evening paper in the days when television’s number one actor was Conelrad for six hours every day, not a lot of plot. Probably the best part, and most enduring feature of Colonel William Rockhill Nelson will be an art gallery, but what a gallery. The other ignored daily, the Wall Street Journal, now owned by Fox, thrives, even though I seldom appreciate the local section. I could care less about making Big Apple Pie, but the financial and internation news remains one of the best coverages, internationally, and the editorials appear to have balance. So why is it that WSJ and USA Today thrive while our locals fail? Perhaps it is national distribution. The New York Times and Washington Post try, but fail miserably. It is the middle markets that are dying, from the Star to the Journal World. For middle markets we get our news from television and the internet but for smaller markets, it is our only source of news, the local school teams and events left uncovered by the middle markets. As the rural towns die, their weeklies will die too. Whether it is bias, bad reporting, bad management or just changes in the structure of competition, things have, and still are, changing in the news industry. Even television has changed with cable and satellite. Please let me know if I can use my talents as a gas station attendant anytime soon. On my resume, it says that I know how to write in the language of cursive, and I even carry a pen to delight in the opportunity.
Cowboy is correct, true change doesn’t come easy at 18th & Grand…
Even among some of the key higher ups who are licking their chops at phasing out most of the remaining Baby Boomer era reporters and writers.
Phi Kappa Psi at Virginia is looking for pledges majoring in journalism. They need them to go to work at their magazine, Rolling Stone.
Funny