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Post by dgriffin on May 23, 2009 7:56:02 GMT -5
If Chanatry's and the car dealers ever quit advertising, the advertising revenues will be next to non existent. Chanatry's buys full page ads, and the car dealers keep the classifieds alive competing with each other. And the car dealers appear to be following the dinosaurs to extinction. CB, interesting report. Of course, they could improve net revenue by cutting costs or raise the gross revenue by charging more for the paper. But you're astute enough to pick that out, so I do wonder how they did it. I don't think the small city daily newspapers have long to live. No evidence or complicated assessment here. I just think they're acting like they won't be around long, from what I've seen of customer service, or dedication to craft and purpose. They have the attitude of a very sick patient.
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Post by Clipper on May 23, 2009 12:31:42 GMT -5
I don't think you will see the OD go away in the near future. I have not researched any figures, but I look at it from the perspective that the place was killing it's employees with austerity in every department, to a point of making it hard to get the job done. I simply wonder how long they can continue to "use" people and take the gravy at a corporate level.
That poor old press was requiring almost daily major repairs and maintenance when I was there, and that has been 10 years ago. they have since done away with company drivers in the transportation department for the most part, but the contractors still have to be paid, and with gasoline prices what they are, the OD never has been one to pay a fair fuel stipend when fuel costs rose. Not too many folks are going to stay on a part time job that puts wear and tear on their vehicle, requires lifting 30 pound bundles of papers in and out of a truck, and wandering about the rural areas in all sorts of weather in the middle of the night. The pay has always been lousy and it has always been like pulling teeth to insure that those folks were compensated fairly.
It just becomes a matter of who is going to continue to advertise in a paper, and how much can they shrink costs and still publish a daily. I don't see entirely web based news as the only alternative in the very near future, but it may happen within a few more years. Hopefully not in my lifetime.
I have mixed emotions about the OD. The newspaper business is a challenging and exciting business to be a part of. You have to think fast and be quick on your feet to insure that the papers are on the street in a timely manner. I truly enjoyed the job, until it got to be too much about saving money, and it became impossible to keep help. The OD was always a great place for the "challenged" to work. They had many of these folks working in distribution, with job coaches, stuffing the inserts, and bundling the papers. They received the same wage as my drivers did. I could not hire mentally challenged or learning disabled folks to drive trucks and read manifests, but the pay was to be the same. It became very frustrating. Even my loading dock personnel had to be able to read the bundle tops in order to put the bundles on the right trucks.
When there are four trucks backed into the dock and the bundles are coming down the belt end to end, it is very fast paced and hectic. It is like that from the first starting of the press until the last paper is on the floor or in a truck on the loading dock. Not a job I would take for $6.35 and hour.
It is hard to envision where the money will come from to continue to print newpapers when advertising revenues continue to fall. Subscription revenues seem to remain steady for the most part, as most people seem to believe as you and I do, that online news is not the most desireable way to get the news. There is something about the morning paper and a cup of coffee that cannot be replaced by sitting in front of a monitor with a mouse in one hand and coffee in the other.
The quality of today's OD printed edition compared to the quality of the paper back in the 60's and 70's is terrible. The paper used to have much more news, much more advertising, and better reporting and writing. It used to take an hour to read the paper, and now you can read it front to back over one cup of coffee.
I don't know the answers. I suppose they are doing all they can with what they have, but it is very frustrating to see the quality of the reporting continue to decline, and the baised reporting that alienates readers when the OD has such a rich and colorful history. Donna is a very educated and experienced publisher, but I have to wonder if she has not outlived her usefullness at the OD. I wonder if a new publisher would not be able to revitalize the paper somewhat, and breathe at least a small breath of fresh air into the old pubication. A publisher without Donna's local bias and prejudiced political views. A publisher that would more fairly report the facts and not smother the truth when it doesn't agree with her agenda.
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