Update: The Plain Dealer’s parent company will also cut two of its other papers down to the 3-day publishing model. Tick, tick, tick… (NY Times) — Grzegorek
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Today the media world is churning itself into an anxious mess over the fate of the New Orleans daily newspaper, The Times-Picayune. One of the oldest and most storied dailies in the game, the paper has more than a few Pulitzers under it’s belt, including accolades earned as Katrina was pulling the Big Easy to pieces. But what wind and rain couldn’t slow, the realities of the print business have: as first reported in the New York Times, the publication will now only print three times a week. The new emphasis is on the web. Considerable staff cuts are expected.
But besides a hit for journalism, the news out of New Orleans has a possible impact here in Northeast Ohio: Advance Publications, the same parent company putting the Times-Picayune under the knife, owns the Plain Dealer.
Sources inside the Plain Dealer told us today staffers were called in for meetings. Managing Editor Thom Fladung was circling between the departments trying to ease anxiety. The message from the top is that the paper will not be cutting its days and that business would continue as usual. The PD business model is different from the Times-Picayune, the line went. Our sources says everyone assumes there’s a unsaid ellipses hanging off the assurances: for now.
Part of that unease about the future comes from the fact that Advance seems to be implementing a cookie-cutter approach to their pub re-organization. The NOLA moves mirror changes that happened earlier at the Ann Arbor News. As with that change, the Lousisana shuffle will ripple out to other neighboring Advance dailies: The Mobile Press-Register, The Huntsville Times, and the Birmingham News, according to the NYTimes. In addition to the PD and Times-Picayune, Advance owns Newark’s The Star-Ledger and The Oregonian.
Tough news today for everybody in the business. Hopefully, the PD will duck this kind of drastic corporate butcher job.
This article appears in Aug 22-28, 2012.
They could easily cut 3/4 of their Brown’s coverage and that would actually be an upgrade- addition by subtraction.
The opportunity to adapt has almost passed the PD by. They needed to get out of their boxed thinking years ago. When a paper like the Dispatch owned by the Wolf gang, or the PD that has been a censored and un-free-thinking rag from time to time, follows the evolutionary course of main stream media, it becomes of little use to the adaptive needs of the society and cultures which it must represent. Main Stream Media is a dying entity and this is a good thing. The controls over the product are always bad for freedom of expression and investigative reporting. The good investigative reporters have been discouraged by the right-wing control freaks of the last few decades…and longer.
The PD needs to get some balls or they will just go by the way-side. So long as they cow-tow to the censorship which is common today and the total fear of liability which drives so many businesses today, they are not a real part of freedom of speech…On the contrary, they have become part of the oppression of free thought.
Does everyone understand that the very worst politics have gained power because they controlled the main stream media? Take the RNC for instance (please take them). The speakers all had their speeches cleared and scripted like good little republicans. There can be no knew thoughts or ideas from a closed system of communication such as is employed by the republicans…and also by the democrats although to a much lesser degree.
The death of the main-stream media as we know it makes for opportunity for thinkers and investigative reporters who are not afraid of those who use money and power to decide what is given for public consumption.
I like Scene because no one reads the blogs and they do not censor very often. You can say fuck and piss and even cock and it goes through. It is not my intentions to say dirty and vulgar things on the news blogs, but it sure is fun once in a while to use my old Navy and Hood-speak language in public and get away with it. I like to go to bars that allow me to say fuck and bitch and white guy swears like pecker-head and ass-wipe.
I get all of my information online nowadays. I stopped getting the PD when my paper kept getting stolen, and I haven’t missed it!
This is what happens when a newspaper becomes more interested in control and liabilities then hones reporting. The right took over the main stream media and kept telling everyone it was the left who control censorship of ideas of worth. The right does not like freedom of speech much because it gets in the way of bigger profits and money and power.
In recent news, an independent study showed that the biggest loss of readers for the PD was a direct result of Scene’s online news blog. The firm conducting the study concluded this was because Scene’s online news blog actually had interesting things to read about.
What killed the old Cleveland Magazine was the same censorship issues to avoid litigation – and not to offend advertisers – what was once a good mainstream publication was its hard hitting stories – I stopped reading once the investigative reporting on Northeast Ohio was stopped and the publication lost its edge and opted for soft news and features instead. I’ve noticed the Monday thru Saturday Plain Dealer shrink over the years – especially in the current year. Sad if it becomes another Sun News lookalike. The sun is a good paper and I read mainly the police blotters and some of the feature articles – but I go to the PD for in-depth news both locally and nationally. Cutting the paper down to three days a week would eventually sound its death knell – leaving Cleveland without a daily. My guess are ad sales are off and there are not as many reporter/writers on staff as there once was! Lets hope it does not go the way of the Cleveland Press.
What killed the old Cleveland Magazine was the same censorship issues to avoid litigation – and not to offend advertisers – what was once a good mainstream publication with its hard hitting stories eventually went soft – I stopped reading once the investigative reporting on Northeast Ohio was stopped and the publication lost its edge and went with soft news and features instead. I’ve noticed the Monday thru Saturday Plain Dealer shrink over the years – especially in the current year. Sad if it becomes another Sun News lookalike. The Sun is a good paper and I read mainly the police blotters and some of the feature articles – but I go to the PD for in-depth news both locally, nationally and internationally. Cutting the paper down to three days a week would eventually sound the PD’s death knell – leaving Cleveland without a daily. My guess are ad sales are off and there are not as many reporter/writers on staff as there once was! Lets hope it does not go the way of the Cleveland Press.
Aaaaaaahahaahahaha! @ Adam…TRUE!!!!
Scenes web site is way better than clevelanddotcom
Besides first thing in the morning is coffee and news in front of a flatscreen…I bet 99% of all cube dwellers do it….
Tick tick tick indeed. The timer is still going, and it’s getting closer to 0.
When I get home, I turn on….my laptop and read the news there. I can choose what I want to read about, not just hear about every rape, murder, and robbery that the news wants to shove down my throat. You can do the same thing with a newspaper, except when you’re online your news is updated all the time, not just updated the day or night before.