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Post by Deleted on Jan 19, 2020 12:51:14 GMT -5
Can you believe that a City of over 60,000 people have a newspaper that cannot afford to run the current comics so are dropping a number of them. The last day for Jumpstart, Hagar the Horrible and B.C. will be Sunday, Feb. 2. I always read Hagar. Well at least I can go to Syracuse.com and read it.
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Post by clarencebunsen on Jan 19, 2020 14:34:09 GMT -5
Most of them are available online.
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Post by Clipper on Jan 19, 2020 15:37:53 GMT -5
It seems that the printed newspaper is on it's way to obsolescence PB. A newspaper is expensive to print and distribute. When I worked there the budget was short even under Gannett. I have watched while it continued to decline since then to a point where the paper isn't even printed in Utica anymore. The reason I quit and moved on was because the publisher would not pay the transportation folks enough to keep good help. Paying drivers $6.35 and hour to come out in the middle of the night in all sorts of weather made it impossible to hire or keep dependable drivers to deliver the bundles to the carriers and single copy outlets such as convenience stores.
There were people there when I was there that had been with the OD for many many years, and in most departments they managed to live with the short budget and were relatively happy with their chosen career. Transportation and circulation were where they constantly tried to cut the budget. I still am in touch with many that I worked with. The press room was adjacent to my office and I lived next door to the head pressman at one point up in Hinckley. When they shut down the press it did away with the jobs of 12 or 15 people. I only know of one of them that has been able to continue as a press operator. He now works for the Rome Sentinel. The printing moved to Ithaca to another smaller Gannett paper, and later to the Binghamton area. I think now it may be printed in Syracuse. It had to be hard to efficiently and expeditiously get papers from Binghamton to Utica by truck and get them on the newsstands and in the hands of delivery folks. Especially in winter.
Our local paper here also has trouble keeping carriers but at least our paper has a brand new, state of the art, German printing press and a new production facility in the industrial park outside of town. Their circulation area stretches for 30 or 40 miles up into the coal fields and they seem to maintain a relatively strong circulation base. We pay $20 a month for the printed paper and that gives me access to the digital version also. There have been times when they didn't have a carrier for our route and the district manager delivered the papers. There were times when it was very late, and times when it didn't show up at all, but they seem to have stabilized for now. I like being able to read the digital version on days when the paper is late or doesn't come. An inch of snow shuts things down and they don't bother delivering. They just credit your account for the missing paper.
Where IS the OD printed now? Do you get the digital option if you are a subscriber to the print edition? I would be curious as to how it is to work there now.
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Post by clarencebunsen on Jan 19, 2020 15:45:57 GMT -5
I get the digital option as a subscriber. The business model is becoming tougher for newspapers. For a long time they got more revenue from advertising than from selling newspapers. Both reading news and advertising is moving online. I spend more time using Google News than I do reading the OD.
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Post by BHU on Jan 19, 2020 16:15:52 GMT -5
I subscribed to the OD for many years but I cancelled them 2 years ago when they again raised the subscribtion rate. I was paying $32/month. I almost became a subscriber again a few months ago when I got a sales pitch from them over the phone. I think it was like $12 for the year but they also wanted to charge me $5 for a processing fee. I told them to forget it.
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