The Observation Deck

I just read a blurb on YAHOO about the 10 major papers most likely to fold.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090309/u ... 9188378500

The PLAIN DEALER is one of them.

"The Plain Dealer will be shut or go digital by the end of next year."

Now there is something worse than their one page editorial section -- NO EDITORIAL SECTION!!!

John,

I read this as well. Interesting.

Not too long ago, newspapers were the easiest way to make money. On average a 20% profit. Now papers are losing millions just to keep going.

I still like to read my news on paper, but when the PD cuts so many local stories and just fills pages with AP wire stories, why pay for it when it's available online?

Times have changed!

John Viglianco wrote:"The Plain Dealer will be shut or go digital by the end of next year."

I suspect that the article is wrong about the Plain Dealer. They are in better shape than most local papers, will soon be printing the Akron Beacon Journal and other papers and still is almost profitable.

Of course never say never.

I'm not one of those who will welcome the end of newspapers. Most of what you read on the internet started in print. Most of the real reporting is done by the print journalists. Most of the intelligent analysis is first seen in print.

I suppose if the newspapers all go under then the internet will improve as a source of news. I suspect that it won't quit work out that way.

Everyone who reads news on the internet should subuscribe to at least one newspaper.

I don't see the advantage of print journalism, but I'm not a parakeet.

Print journalism is under a lot of pressure to get stories out quickly, at the expense of accuracy and analysis, but by the time they deliver the paper the stories are dated.

On line journalism delivers the news faster, and can be updated almost instantly. All that keeps print journalism ticking is the emotional attachment of older generations to having a tangible item in their hands, and whatever uses we each have for newsprint (I've been starting fires with old bank statements lately, and they don't burn as well), and the younger generation won't have that attachment. On line I can read enough papers that the propaganda offsets, and I feel I can get closer to the truth; I couldn't afford to subscribe to that many papers, and they couldn't deliver the paper to me as currently as they can on line.

My concern is that I think talented reporters and editors should be able to earn a living, and they are losing their jobs as papers fold. I haven't seen an economic model where they could prosper, and I'm concerned that they will be lost in a sea of bloggers and talking heads.

Will Brown wrote:My concern is that I think talented reporters and editors should be able to earn a living, and they are losing their jobs as papers fold. I haven't seen an economic model where they could prosper, and I'm concerned that they will be lost in a sea of bloggers and talking heads.

I agree.

Subscribe to a newspaper. The coupons pay for the paper and sometimes day old news is properly aged.

Last week I read a year old article in the Economist about banks. It was interesting to read all the incorrect things they had to say. Hindsight is 20/20.

All

One of the Observer Board members has been working with the Plain Dealer to stay open and turn it around. It is very tough, but she told me yesterday do not believe everything you read about the death of the PD and I will take her at her word, as Print Media is her business.

Of course we met her at a Cleveland Club Meeting called, "The Death Of Print Media" it was at that City Club Meeting that having never met her she said the Lakewood Observer was ten years ahead of the curve. which was echoed by Advertising Age that said, "three papers have it right, The Wall Street Journal, The Lakewood Observer, and the New York Times..."

Print media is not dying, I see a very bright future for it, as for Will Brown's comment I can point to many reasons why it will survive. One is that it is green, and done correctly cost very little to produce. The question is how can you do it correctly? I would say that the major media concerns have no idea how to do it correctly any longer.

Let's take the Plain Dealer first they have forecasted their own demise for over a decade. At some point, readers have to believe they are correct and start to stop along with advertisers. What the majors papers and media chains had hoped was that they could shed their "hard copy" and control the internet and the $$$$$$ that flowed. Never seeing blogs, discussion boards, Web 2.0 and now Web 3.0 some of us are diving into. They thought, no one would ever believe bloggers!

Then the papers proceeded to cut their valued long time writers in an effort to save money. Thereby losing many of their older readers that hung on their every word. Then they cut their staff, and local delivery systems, alienating more, and causing thousands to start to bad wrap the paper

Then their is the heavy dependence on classified ads. Something the LO had never looked at as we had no interest in competing ever with the Sun or PD. Instead we had hoped to fill a needed niche. Of course the Sun and PD made fun of the LO and even insulted us and our members on occasion, thought they are desperately trying to copy us now. Still not realizing that they have a key to longevity, that they are refusing to see, or work to their advantage.

Now the PD has turned to AP stories for the most part, something that is also on every TV, and online in abundance. This would be like Three Birds in a panic over the number of burger McDonald's sells, and getting rid of everyone and selling crappy burgers without a drive through. They would go broke. It is at this point I usually go into my restaurant analogy. Restaraunts are very easy to run - quality + service + constancy + portions/value in your market = $$$$$$. Cut any of the equation, and you start sliding down a slippery slope. The same is true with papers. Had the Plain Dealer stayed Northern Ohio's Best Regional Paper, they would be doing fine, except for the insane spending on building and presses.

Online advertising fell sharper last year than print advertising. In Lakewood daily access to a computer is around 62%, in East Cleveland it is 8%, in Cleveland it is around 37%. Because of the cost of computers, net, etc. Papers have a very long shelf life. We have more projects going on then any of us thought when we launched NinthEstate.

FWIW

[quote="Jim O'Bryan"]All

Print media is not dying, I see a very bright future for it, as for Will Brown's comment I can point to many reasons why it will survive. One is that it is green, and done correctly cost very little to produce. The question is how can you do it correctly? I would say that the major media concerns have no idea how to do it correctly any longer.

Let's take the Plain Dealer first they have forecasted their own demise for over a decade. At some point, readers have to believe they are correct and start to stop along with advertisers. What the majors papers and media chains had hoped was that they could shed their "hard copy" and control the internet and the $$$$$$ that flowed. Never seeing blogs, discussion boards, Web 2.0 and now Web 3.0 some of us are diving into. They thought, no one would ever believe bloggers!

Then the papers proceeded to cut their valued long time writers in an effort to save money. Thereby losing many of their older readers that hung on their every word. Then they cut their staff, and local delivery systems, alienating more, and causing thousands to start to bad wrap the paper

Then their is the heavy dependence on classified ads. Something the LO had never looked at as we had no interest in competing ever with the Sun or PD. Instead we had hoped to fill a needed niche. Of course the Sun and PD made fun of the LO and even insulted us and our members on occasion, thought they are desperately trying to copy us now. Still not realizing that they have a key to longevity, that they are refusing to see, or work to their advantage.

Now the PD has turned to AP stories for the most part, something that is also on every TV, and online in abundance. This would be like Three Birds in a panic over the number of burger McDonald's sells, and getting rid of everyone and selling crappy burgers without a drive through. They would go broke. It is at this point I usually go into my restaurant analogy. Restaraunts are very easy to run - quality + service + constancy + portions/value in your market = $$$$$$. Cut any of the equation, and you start sliding down a slippery slope. The same is true with papers. Had the Plain Dealer stayed Northern Ohio's Best Regional Paper, they would be doing fine, except for the insane spending on building and presses.

Online advertising fell sharper last year than print advertising. In Lakewood daily access to a computer is around 62%, in East Cleveland it is 8%, in Cleveland it is around 37%. Because of the cost of computers, net, etc. Papers have a very long shelf life. We have more projects going on then any of us thought when we launched NinthEstate.

FWIW[/quote]

You're a bit short on your list of many reasons this obsolete medium will survive.

First, your definition of green must be rather strange. I doubt many would agree that slaughtering huge numbers of trees to make newsprint is very green. And I would think both print and electronic media use electricity in the editorial process, but I would think the costs of printing and delivering print would be greater than the cost of the electricity we use to get online. I don't know how the LO is delivered, possibly by bicycle, but most papers are delivered by truck, with attendant environmental costs.

Your figures regarding computer ownership are meaningless without figures showing how many people use free computers. and how many actually read a newspaper. e.g., how many people are satisfied getting their news from broadcast media. Be honest now, when you get wind of a major breaking news event, do you turn on your TV or radio, or an internet news source, or do you wait for tomorrow's newspaper to tell you about it. I think the print media knows they are not the primary source, as often their stories appear to be written to supplement what the reader already got from the broadcast media.

A previous poster cited coupons as a benefit of print media, but between my overburdened mailperson (bonus points for PC?) and online coupons we have more coupons than we can keep track of, especially since many of them are for stuff we don't want.

Will

My numbers were not ownership. They were for DAILY access to a computer. It does not take into account every two days or weekly. Daily access.

Green, all forms of print with the single exception of newsprint is mostly made with virgin lumber, cotton, polyester fibers. News print is the single largest use for recycled paper, printed with soy bean ink. It is believe newspapers would never run out of newsprint of ever need a tree if people recycle. How many recycled products to you think are really bought each year. Glass, aluminum, fleece, and newsprint are just about it. Out of those, newsprint needs the smallest carbon footprint to recycle.

Compare that to the plastics and and toxins in a computer! Or TV!

Newspapers are about as green as it gets.

.

You appear to labor under the delusion that people buy TVs and computers solely to follow the news. I don't know anyone who has done that, but I would bet that we could find someone who bought a computer to use in creating a printed paper.

Put simply, if you banned the use of computers for reading news, people would just do something else with their computers (collect spam, perhaps) and there would be almost no lessening of the carbon footprint. If, by contrast, you banned printed news, millions of trees would be saved from a cruel fate, not to mention the lessening of petroleum used for printers' ink (and I'm hoping that the problem I read about some years ago about toxicity of printers' ink has been resolved). As for recycling, the materials could be put to other uses. The ecological impact would be substantial, and positive.

As an expert in this field, do you know of any papers that are printed on unbleached paper? You know, that dung colored stuff that would be very appropriate for many papers. I thought bleaching paper was a sin in the Church of the Truly Environmentally Aware.

Need I point out that the newspaper industry is, to say the least, troubled. Just this morning I read of a paper in Seattle that is discontinuing its print version to go electronic, and the paper with which they were sharing production costs is near bankruptcy.

I understand the attachment to printed newspapers, and when I stopped reading them, I missed the feel of something in your hand. But time marches on and we bury the dead, and the print news industry is very near death.

Do you also promote buggy whips? They are probably very green, and as economically viable as a printed newspaper.

Will Brown wrote:You appear to labor under the delusion that people buy TVs and computers solely to follow the news. I don't know anyone who has done that, but I would bet that we could find someone who bought a computer to use in creating a printed paper.

Put simply, if you banned the use of computers for reading news, people would just do something else with their computers (collect spam, perhaps) and there would be almost no lessening of the carbon footprint. If, by contrast, you banned printed news, millions of trees would be saved from a cruel fate, not to mention the lessening of petroleum used for printers' ink (and I'm hoping that the problem I read about some years ago about toxicity of printers' ink has been resolved). As for recycling, the materials could be put to other uses. The ecological impact would be substantial, and positive.

As an expert in this field, do you know of any papers that are printed on unbleached paper? You know, that dung colored stuff that would be very appropriate for many papers. I thought bleaching paper was a sin in the Church of the Truly Environmentally Aware.

Need I point out that the newspaper industry is, to say the least, troubled. Just this morning I read of a paper in Seattle that is discontinuing its print version to go electronic, and the paper with which they were sharing production costs is near bankruptcy.

I understand the attachment to printed newspapers, and when I stopped reading them, I missed the feel of something in your hand. But time marches on and we bury the dead, and the print news industry is very near death.

Do you also promote buggy whips? They are probably very green, and as economically viable as a printed newspaper.

Will


I still think buggy whips are a good idea when in a buggy, sleigh or other machine pulled by animals.

While many people, especially Americans prefer to put their heads in the sand and ignore the news, as they(the collective) have ruined the world, following the worst president of all time into the darkness of genocide. Many still like to be informed. The computer, blackberry, iphone and other devices can bring a lot of news to your fingertips. Well, that is mostly AP stories and a couple others. However, many of these are now becoming financial nightmares as the advertisers run from the internet, or they pool around portals like AOL and Yahoo. This leaves a growing market for some papers, and a dwindling market for others.

Now I am probably much older than you but I see papers having a bright life, if handled correctly, and positioned correctly. I also see a massive thinning process hitting the net. Right now the average blog gets 1.5 hits a day. That would be the blogger and his/her mother/father every other day. So the fascination will fall off rapidly. Also the world is going more tribal, and as more people realize that Facebook, My Space, and Linked are NSA ops to tie everyone together in social networks for uses down the road they too will fall by the wayside. The new Observer which changes by the hour is deep in Web 3.0 technology, and will further underline the cost of development with the rate of return. Without the financial backing we enjoy it would not be possible, many will not keep up.

Again we live in a truly upscale community with 64% of the residents having daily access, far less than the 98% of Solon, Bay, Westlake, and really closer to the 10% of East Cleveland, we will all be able to go to wherever we want, well wait, half or less. Unemployment just hit 28% in Cuy County, well they will not be getting new computers or software this year, or for at least the next six as the economy spirals down and takes another 15-20 years to rebound, if ever. Meanwhile newsprint is still one fo the most cost effective ways to get information out to all that can read.

As for the bright white like we use, it is farther up the recycle tray then the dingy brown, actually grey brown you speak of. Still because of the chemical make-up of most of the inks, it can be brought back to the light grey that is most comfortable on the eyes than any other form of printing.

But I guess you have made up your mind, so with a crack of the whip we ride off into the future.

.