The Death Star of Newspapers Not So Deadly?

Alden May Finally Be Realizing When Enough is Enough
An interesting take by Rick Edmonds of Poynter on how Alden Global Capital, the rapacious venture capitalists who gobble up newspaper assets whole and then spit out their desiccated remains, has essentially hit a pause button on its plundering. At least for now.

The thinking, according to Edmonds, is that Alden has stripped away the muscle from its properties and is momentarily content to look at the bones.

Since the company does not entertain questions, it’s a guess why. More reductions could be on the way later this year. Or Alden may have calculated that it has reached the minimum number of staffers necessary to put out a news report people will pay for, now that it is revving up a drive for paid digital subscriptions.


If so, there's a dangerous flaw in that model, one others like Gannett haven't realized or didn't care too much to rectify. Namely, it's hard to convince people to pony up for digital subs when there's nothing worth paying for. If all a paper does is re-purpose what little print content it has for the web without any value add, the ennui readers will have for the print version will infect the digital edition.Most papers out of the Times-Post-Journal orbit still pay too little attention to the web product to make it worth paying for, certainly not to the point where it can convince people to shed the more-expensive-to-produced-and-distribute print version. 

There's a reason why print circulation has cratered. There's a reason there hasn't been a corresponding digital migration.So, instead you have a company like Gannett slapping a $2.50 price tag on a 16-page edition of The Journal News and wondering why its daily circulation is down to 24,000, when it was 160,000 back when I was a reporter there in the late eighties.The end of print, or at least curtailing the number of print days at most publishers, seems a foregone conclusion at this point. It's already happened in Pittsburgh, at many Advance Media titles, like the Post-Standard in Syracuse and soon the Saturday editions at McClatchy titles. Monday papers would likely be next to go.

Which brings us back to Alden. What reason is there to expect it's capable of investing in digital if it can shake the print habit? I don't think the remaining reporters in places like Denver, San Jose or St. Paul have any expectations of that happening. Then again....Alden is all about extracting value. Maybe the best way for that to happen is by actually injecting some cash into their digital side, so the papers become more profitable and, more importantly, valuable. That's valuable, as in attracting a buyer.

Could Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon Shiong, e.g., find a reinvigorated San Jose Mercury-News and its beleaguered sister papers in the Bay Area irresistible? Yes, Alden appears to bask in its reputation of predatory buyer. But making money is often more about knowing when to get out rather than staying in. You just need to have something worth selling first. 

Is Unemployment Better Than Working For Gannett?

Maybe Not, But.....

I've been chatting this week with a couple of scribes at the Journal News, the Gannett paper in New York's northern suburbs where I toiled in the late 80s. The paper, like many in the chain, is a desiccated husk of its former self both in size and staffing. The circulation has followed a similar pattern, now down to about 55,000 daily where it was 160,000 when I was there.

Those convos got me thinking about Gannett's newest employees, the staffs of 11 dailies in Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Texas, as part of a swap with Digital First in which Gannett gave up its 19 percent interest in some California newspapers in return.

Suffice to say, if you're an employee of the El Paso Times, the York Daily Record or one of the nine other dailies that are now orbiting the Gannett mother ship, these are not happy days. Not that you were exactly doing jigs with Digital First, which shares a reputation with Gannett as a ruthless cost-cutter.

Gannett has shown no compunction about staffing its newsrooms to the bare minimums. Copy editing is farmed out to regional hubs as is design. Admittedly, I don't know if the six small New Mexico dailies have separate editing staffs below the top of the masthead. But if they do, chances are they won't for long, if Gannett is consistent with past moves at papers in New Jersey and New York, among others. The same will likely hold for printing presses.

As Ken Doctor pointed out, the move makes financial sense for Gannett, now that it is a standalone newspaper company lacking debt. It also makes sense for Digital First, which is breaking itself into pieces after attempts at finding a buyer for all of its disparate parts never went anywhere.

Does it make sense for any of the newspapers' employees? Doubtful. It will likely be a case of meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

At least they have what fewer people than ever can claim--jobs working for a newspaper.

For now.

Are Newspaper Paywalls Starting to Crumble?

Well, Maybe Not Yet, But....

Ever since paywalls became the new black for newspapers, they have acquired some rather ardent detractors as well as defenders.
In the latter category are The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, which have profited handsomely by putting up digital gates. The Times now has nearly 676,000 digital subscribers--also figuring in The International Herald Tribune--while the Journal, a paywall pioneer, has nearly 900,000.
But those papers have oodles of unique content--some of it exclusively digital--that is worth reading and paying for. The same can't be said for most newspapers, though they sure as hell want to make their case. Hundreds of newspapers now have some kind of paywall.
However, for many, that's a problem. They're creating a digital divide at the same time they're cutting staff and content.
All of Gannett's 80 community newspapers have a metered system on their websites. But have you read any of these papers lately? Feh. There's not much there there. And yet Gannett wants you to pony up anyway.
And while early numbers showed that revenue gains from digital subs at Gannett made up for print advertising losses, that may not be sustainable if print subscribers--faced with price increases and shrinking papers--exit more quickly than digital readers enter. Ditto for advertisers. At my local Journal-News in New York's northern suburbs, weekday circulation is 66,000. It was 77,000 just two years earlier. Do you really think digital revenue is making up the difference? Of course not. That's why the J-N laid off 11 percent of its staff in August.
Now the headlong rush to digital gold is being reassessed. First, it was the San Francisco Chronicle that decided to make everything on sfgate.com free again. Now, it's the Dallas Morning News that has signaled retreat. It dropped its paywall in favor of an enhanced experience for "premium subscribers."
How that'll be received remains to be seen (it's free for print subscribers), but unless it's a big-time game-changer, don't expect readers to come a flocking. After all, the reason the DMN dropped its paywall wasn't to be nice. Rather, it bombed with readers. As the paper's CEO said, it didn't create a "massive groundswell" of new subscribers. Quite a euphemism that.
So while the air of inevitability may not be sucked out of the paywall equation just yet, the numbers still have to add up to make it stick. As the San Francisco and Dallas papers have proved, that's a lot easier said than done.

Journal-News Takes Unwarranted Flak over Gun Map

Wheezing Gannett Paper Shows Signs of Life Fulfilling Its Journalistic Mission

You know it's a slow week when a newspaper becomes news. And you know it's a really slow week when that newspaper is The Journal-News, the underachieving (to put it charitably) Gannett property serving New York's northern suburbs (and a former employer of mine from way back when).
The J-N fell into the media's crosshairs this week following publication of an intriguing map that showed readers the names and addresses of registered gun owners in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties.
All in all, a pretty cool idea for a paper that's usually devoid of inspiration. Not surprisingly, lots of folks are in a tizzy over this information, and not just the nattering nabobs of negativism at the NRA.
While waiting for my car to be fixed this morning, the TV in the waiting room was turned to Fox & Friends, where substitute co-host Clayton Moore, who will never be mistaken for a rocket scientist, just shook his head and said it's "wrong" what the paper did. His compadres on the couch, Kelly Wright and Juliet Huddy were also doing their "tsks, tsks" and expressing as much outrage as they could muster without a second cup of coffee.
That's been typical of much of the coverage I've seen, which includes useless person-on-the-street interviews that make no mention of the First Amendment or public record laws.
The value of this information is certainly arguable. At best, the map is an interesting sidebar to Newtown. But the fact that some of your friends and neighbors are legally exercising their Second Amendment rights as currently interpreted by the courts is not terribly newsworthy in an of itself.
And the Journal-News could have handled the contretemps a little better. I'm not sure what was the point of the note attached to the article accompanying the map, which mentioned that reporter Dwight Worley, who wrote the piece, "owns a Smith & Wesson 686 .357 Magnum and has had a residence permit in New York City for that weapon since February 2011."
Bully for Dwight. But so what? Does that make him any more qualified to report the story? Nah. Go back into the J-N archives and take a look at the gun control stories I wrote. In 1988. And the last gun I fired was at the riflery range in summer camp.
Also, why is the paper not being more forceful in responding to the reaction to the pece? It has, alternately, either not commented or issued mealy-mouthed canned statements, like this one from publisher Janet Hasson:
“We knew publication of the database (as well as the accompanying article providing context) would be controversial. But we felt sharing information about gun permits in our area was important in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings.”

That's the best you can do, Janet? Given that she's never worked as a reporter., maybe it is.

Those 1,900 Layoffs at Gannett May Not Be So Bad After All....

Especially When You Consider There Could Be A Lot More Than That Next Year

I've been a constant reader of Gannett Blog recently, in part to keep up with who might be getting the ax at one of my former haunts, the Journal-News in Westchester-Rockland, but to also be reminded of how heartless those in newsroom management can so often be.
Unfortunately, the hundreds of posters on the blog have provided ample material to show that, more than ever, Gannett is utterly without a clue.
But what Gannett is rather good at -- and it's certainly not putting out a quality newspaper at most of its properties -- is making a profit, even when readership and circulation go in the crapper.
And with the recession showing every sign it'll keep us in a full Nelson next year, it sounds like the Gannett rocket scientists are getting ready, if one poster on the blog is correct (and it's hard to bet against him given the state of things.

On my way out the President and Publisher of our very large region told me that there will be more layoffs in February 2009. He/She said that what everyone did this week will be small in comparison to the next round. This person said that Bob Dickey and his senior advisors were looking at another 5,000 to 6,000 people and this time that number won't include "to be hired" heads.
I am glad I am now gone and I do have plenty of stories to tell.

Chances are, wherever that writer winds up will likely be better than where he came from. The tricky part is finding somewhere to land.
Very tricky indeed.