[NA] Newspapers

I was in newspapers from '74 - '02. Got out when we bought our first hotel in Iowa.

My first newspaper had 220 employees when I started there. The last time I checked, back in '16, they were down to 39.

And that tells you everything you need to know about newspapers.

It's funny, I was the marketing manager when it became obvious that computers and the internet were the next "Big Thing". Heck, we were predicting it in the 1980s.

We all thought everything would stay the same. Only the delivery method would change from trucks and drivers, to laptops.

Boy, were we wrong. None of us saw the dissolution and collapse of the entire business model.

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First time I've read a physical newspaper was actually yesterday when I checked into my hotel room and picked up a copy of USA Today.

I don't expect to read another paper until my next out-of-town trip.

Newspapers at least have some marginal value. Phone books not so much. When I lived in Silicon Valley, I got a couple thick phonebooks every year, one white pages, and one yellow pages. Talk about useless! I picked them up, took them out of their protective phone book condom (aka plastic wrapper), and threw them into the recycling bin.

Who uses phone books anymore? I haven't relied on phone books since people stopped subscribing to land lines 20 years ago (which removed the need for white pages), and the Internet and review sites like Yelp popped up (which removed the need for yellow pages).

I seriously cannot imagine having a need for a phone book anymore. Ever. I can't even believe they get enough advertising dollars to support publishing them. I guess even more surprising than "Who uses phone books anymore" is "Why are people spending money advertising in them?" Boggles my mind.

What boggles my mind is your first sentence.
 
Boy, were we wrong. None of us saw the dissolution and collapse of the entire business model.
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The problem is overhead in the traditional news world, same with brick and mortar retail. Hard to compete with some kid in their parent's basement running a website, with little to no overhead cost or expectations of profit.
 
The Economist refers to itself as a newspaper even though it is published weekly and most of us would call it a newsmagazine. It is not cheap, a year subscription is around $200. But hands down it beats any other source out there. It takes a good 8 hours a week to read it, but if you do you will expand your vocabulary at the very least. They regularly use words like "uxorious" and quotidian. It is easy to find sources on the web that tell us what is happening, harder to find out why they happen.
 
What boggles my mind is your first sentence.

Oops! Brain fart! What I meant to write was, "First time I've read a physical newspaper in the past ten years or so..."

The last time I had a subscription to a newspaper was back in 1996, when I lived in Fishers, IN (outside Indianapolis) and had a subscription to the Sunday paper. Hell, I even clipped coupons then to save money. But when I moved away from Indiana, I never had another newspaper subscription, and rarely picked one up, since news started becoming available on the Internet around then. Haven't clipped coupons since then, either.
 
Oops! Brain fart! What I meant to write was, "First time I've read a physical newspaper in the past ten years or so..."

The last time I had a subscription to a newspaper was back in 1996, when I lived in Fishers, IN (outside Indianapolis) and had a subscription to the Sunday paper. Hell, I even clipped coupons then to save money. But when I moved away from Indiana, I never had another newspaper subscription, and rarely picked one up, since news started becoming available on the Internet around then. Haven't clipped coupons since then, either.

Ok, my mind is now far less boggled. Thanks. :)

I haven't subscribed to a newspaper in a long time either but I travel a fair bit and usually grab the free USA today at the hotel. Also the wife will occasionally pick up the WSJ weekend edition at Starbucks. Then there is the occasional one left in the breakroom or elsewhere that I might pick up and glance at. So I don't go too long without reading a paper. Even though they are far less ubiquitous than they used to be, they still find their way into my world and into my hands. So my mind is still a little boggled that you have managed to avoid them this long. I can't seem to do so though I am not taking measures to do so either.

Fishers, huh? Have you been back there lately? That place has really exploded. I used to live in the country outside of Pendleton & Fortville, so I am quite familiar with the area. Though I moved away quite a number of years ago, I still have family there so I have been through the area a few times in recent years. The growth in that area is crazy.
 
Fishers, huh? Have you been back there lately? That place has really exploded. I used to live in the country outside of Pendleton & Fortville, so I am quite familiar with the area. Though I moved away quite a number of years ago, I still have family there so I have been through the area a few times in recent years. The growth in that area is crazy.

My first job out of college was working at the Delco Remy facility in Anderson, and then my company opened a new software development center in Indianapolis, so I moved to Fishers. I really wanted to live in Carmel, but couldn't afford it.

I was in the Indy area for a couple years, and then moved to Colorado, but I had a lot of fun while there. Worked with some cool people, but unfortunately as the years have passed, I've lost touch with them. But most of them stayed in the area. My family was never into outdoor things, but I wanted to be, so I started hiking while in Indiana. IIRC, my first hike was in Clifty Falls State Park.

I've read that Indy has undergone a lot of growth and changes, especially downtown, and I'm sure I wouldn't recognize the place if I went back. One of the things on my bucket list is to revisit all the places I've lived before and try to meet up with old friends and coworkers. In fact, after I get my PPL, I may try to do that.

I also read that the Delco Remy facility is pretty much gone or shut down. I worked in one of the main buildings along Columbus Avenue, and I guess they tore it down years ago. Man, that brings back memories.

One of these days, I'll get back there. Would like to see the place again and catch up with old friends.
 
Around 1990 the Dallas Morning News built a new printing plant in Plano and shut down the presses at their downtown Dallas location. Later in the decade I was building a TV studio in an adjoining building for their TV affiliate, and had to run some cabling between the newspaper's offices and the TV studio.

The cabling ran through the old press hall, which by then was empty. I would really have liked to see it in operation, because the press hall was freekin' huge, like 300' X 100' , and 30' to the deck.

Think of all the jobs in printing that have disappeared. Newspapers, magazines, corporate, blueprint, photography, etc...gotta be a big number.
 
I for one still like to sit on the back porch with my coffee and read a real newspaper. Guess it rubbed off from my Dad.
 
I also read that the Delco Remy facility is pretty much gone or shut down. I worked in one of the main buildings along Columbus Avenue, and I guess they tore it down years ago. Man, that brings back memories.

One of these days, I'll get back there. Would like to see the place again and catch up with old friends.

Most of the factories in Anderson are long gone. It is a dying town. Tons of shuttered businesses and a huge population drop. You really don’t want to go back.
 
Maybe I’m just too young to ever remember, but do people really still rely on newspapers to get their news? Seems like newspapers would have gone by the way side atleast a decade ago when the digital era introduced itself. Granted, I know that everyone isn’t up to speed on gathering their news over the internet, but it still surprises me when I see people reading over the newspaper like a fine tooth comb. Maybe it’s just one of those timeless activities that won’t end until the fat lady sings. I dunno.

If I want to get in-depth information I get it from newspapers and news magazines. Television just skims the surface. I do read internet news but it too is space-limited.

Bob
 
I still read the local paper, daily. If you don't live in "the big city" it's the only place you can find out what's going on in the area.
Also, there is a positive argument to be made for the "time lapse" in newspaper news.
Usually by the time the paper goes to print, they get the facts correct. TV almost never does get the facts correct in the first 24 hours, and you never see a retraction on TV when they screw up.
They just keep talking over each other with whatever version is current.
 
If I want to get in-depth information I get it from newspapers and news magazines. Television just skims the surface. I do read internet news but it too is space-limited.

Bob
What do you mean by saying the internet is space limited but newspapers and magazines are not? Not understanding what you mean by that. The opposite is true.
 
Around 1990 the Dallas Morning News built a new printing plant in Plano and shut down the presses at their downtown Dallas location. Later in the decade I was building a TV studio in an adjoining building for their TV affiliate, and had to run some cabling between the newspaper's offices and the TV studio.

The cabling ran through the old press hall, which by then was empty. I would really have liked to see it in operation, because the press hall was freekin' huge, like 300' X 100' , and 30' to the deck.

Think of all the jobs in printing that have disappeared. Newspapers, magazines, corporate, blueprint, photography, etc...gotta be a big number.

We put a data center in where the presses used to be in Phoenix. That was one of “my” sites to partially oversee during an eighteen data center build out. The other was Austin.

Massive building. Presses were long gone by the time we moved in there.

Literally part of the switch from paper to digital, in a weird way.

After seeing what it’s turned into, having a hand in building out the commercial hosting side of the Internet is slowly turning into something not to be too proud of. The vast majority of it is useless. A significant but small portion of it has turned into pure evil.

The “news” from instant systems has degraded significantly in quality and raised in quantity, and delivers the poor quality junk much faster.

Humans who grew up in the newspaper age have no filtering skills for instant news, as a start to the problem.

Phone: Ding!
Tweaker: “Oh some bad thing happened somewhere!”
Me: “Bad things always happened somewhere, you didn’t have a phone that would go ding every time something did. You’d be lucky to have even seen that story on the three national networks back then, maybe buried on page 15 of your local paper. You never read it back then, I know you.”
Tweaker: “But but but it’s IMPORTANT! Did you see what so-and-so SAID? OMG!”
Me: “No, it’s really not important. You’re being manipulated by a website that specializes only in that sort of bad news.”
Tweaker: “I’m going to start a protest march...”
Me: SMH.
 
"News" organizations think they are being journalists when they put up a topic along with tweets from four people saying they are outraged.
 
"News" organizations think they are being journalists when they put up a topic along with tweets from four people saying they are outraged.
Using tweets as filler in online news stories is one of my current pet peeves. It’s just stupid as well as lazy.
 
What do you mean by saying the internet is space limited but newspapers and magazines are not? Not understanding what you mean by that. The opposite is true.

Ryan, there can be a front-page article that jumps to four columns on page 6. An internet story that long would eat up massive amounts of bandwidth and no one would read past the first few graphs.

Bob
 
Ryan, there can be a front-page article that jumps to four columns on page 6.
You reminded me of one of my pet peeves about newspapers. I had forgotten about it since I rarely read newspapers any more.
 
Ryan, there can be a front-page article that jumps to four columns on page 6. An internet story that long would eat up massive amounts of bandwidth and no one would read past the first few graphs.

Bob
Nor are the writers for online news getting paid enough to spend the time to research and write long stories. Gotta pump up the clicks, baby. That's also led to the insanely breathless headlines we used to associate only with the tabloids.
 
My current favorite ******** headline is that Einstein was a racist. Wait until they find out the things Lincoln said. Their heads will explode.
 
You reminded me of one of my pet peeves about newspapers. I had forgotten about it since I rarely read newspapers any more.
You run the risk of missing a good story if you give up to easily.

The Sant Rosa paper got a Pulitzer last year for its reporting on the fires. It wouldn't all fit on one page:

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/topics/?t=october_wildfires

It the story is well written, newspaper style, the who, what, when, and where gets covered early, on the front page. The non-essential details get filled in later. Like the story in our local paper today: Two deputy sheriffs gunned down and killed outside the courthouse during a routine prisoner transport (page 1). The rest of the story is on page 12 (or wherever), where you find out one was a single mom of 3, just about to start a new job. Newspaper writing style should fit the media.
 
You run the risk of missing a good story if you give up to easily.

The Sant Rosa paper got a Pulitzer last year for its reporting on the fires. It wouldn't all fit on one page:

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/topics/?t=october_wildfires

It the story is well written, newspaper style, the who, what, when, and where gets covered early, on the front page. The non-essential details get filled in later. Like the story in our local paper today: Two deputy sheriffs gunned down and killed outside the courthouse during a routine prisoner transport (page 1). The rest of the story is on page 12 (or wherever), where you find out one was a single mom of 3, just about to start a new job. Newspaper writing style should fit the media.
I don't have any problem with stories being long or more than one page. However, I would rather see them run sequentially, rather than having to flip to a non-contiguous page somewhere in the back of the paper.
 
Matthew, that's a horrible crime and loss for two families.

LEOs have to be aware that any time they are on duty could bring this type of incident, and there's no way one can be on edge every second. A small distraction can be deadly. I really feel bad for the families.
 
I don't have any problem with stories being long or more than one page. However, I would rather see them run sequentially, rather than having to flip to a non-contiguous page somewhere in the back of the paper.
Ahh. Yeah, layout is an art. Top stories first, then the others, then the remainder of the top story columns. Above or below the fold is another decision. All this is lost on a web page.
 
Ahh. Yeah, layout is an art. Top stories first, then the others, then the remainder of the top story columns. Above or below the fold is another decision. All this is lost on a web page.

Don't forget to leave space for ads....they keep the paper alive.

Bob
 
Don't forget to leave space for ads....they keep the paper alive.

Bob
And the obits - I was flipping through our Sunday paper while sipping coffee, stopped, and turned back a page. Something had caught my eye, turns out it was the obituary for Kate Spade. She and her family are from KC and her funeral will be here in town.
 
I was a daily newspaper subscriber for years, but let subscriptions lapse about ten years ago. Ironically, the newspaper continued to deliver for several months and then tried billing me for it. I told them, good luck collecting and heard no more about it.

I will buy a random Sunday newspaper...when I need to paint something. Unfortunately, if I had to paint and mask very much, I'll have to buy two. Funny how much smaller the Sunday paper has gotten too. I remember it being six or eight sections long. Now it is one, maybe two...and mostly worthlessly old info.
 
Yep. Price has gone up and quality and quantity have damn near disappeared.

Didn’t keep up with inflation.

You’re reading articles by kids with barely higher than burger flipping wages with $80K in student loans for their Journalism degrees.

Don’t expect too much great journalism from it.
 
I don't expect great literature, but don't journalism degrees require passing some basic English reading/writing classes? Correctly spelled words in simple reasonably formed sentences would be nice.

Once upon a time, what was taught in high school far exceeded what our colleges and universities are cranking out for $100K+ degrees.
 
Spelling and grammar were two of my weakest subjects throughout school but holy fudge cycles, I swear I’m pretty damn good compared to the authors of most online articles I read.
 
There is a new news site starting in Denver (online only, no paper) staffed by former reporters and editors from the local daily DenverPost. Supposedly funded for two years by a cryptocurrency investor and a blockchain tech company. Somehow they are going to use blockchain tech and create a new crypto currency as part of the site. I have no idea why, except it's probably a lot easier to attract investor money to a cryptocurrency site than a newspaper haha
 
I was a daily newspaper subscriber for years, but let subscriptions lapse about ten years ago. Ironically, the newspaper continued to deliver for several months and then tried billing me for it. I told them, good luck collecting and heard no more about it.

I did that too. They just turned the less than $20 dispute over to a collection agency. I'll NEVER subscribe to that rag again.
 
There is a new news site starting in Denver (online only, no paper) staffed by former reporters and editors from the local daily DenverPost. Supposedly funded for two years by a cryptocurrency investor and a blockchain tech company. Somehow they are going to use blockchain tech and create a new crypto currency as part of the site. I have no idea why, except it's probably a lot easier to attract investor money to a cryptocurrency site than a newspaper haha

I assume this is in follow up to the recent dust up where the owner of the paper threatened some staff not to run stories critical of his own businesses? And then fired them when they printed it anyway?

Denver news is really dead compared to twenty years ago.

The biggest loss was both via the Post slowly letting go anyone who knew anything real about local politics and relationships between the people, and the radio stations dropping the local talk shows that had 30 year hosts who knew those relationships... or they retired.

Many of the better middle aged reporters from various papers, radio, and TV to a lesser extent, have moved on to being PR people for companies and government agencies. Better pay, better bennies, and they know how to control the kids still in the Press Corp.

One friend who was at the Denver Business Journal for a long time and wrote very well, decided after a breast cancer scare that she had better things to do in life.

Another was the PR person for the Broomfield Chamber of Commerce for a while.

Others are still at various government agencies.

But a lot of Denver journalists are hiding out in PR roles for sure. The demise of not just one but two newspapers and the syndication of most radio news left not too many places for all of them to land.

The replacements don’t know anything about locals and just create their shows and articles from Internet national web sources. They wouldn’t recognize any of the power players in Denver if they were peeing on the hood of their cars.

Most moved here from somewhere else and have no chance of ever knowing the people doing stuff in Denver for at least another twenty years.

There’s a few exceptions. Kyle Clark and his younger news crew over at 9News seem to have taken over that place a bit and forced some journalism back into their reporting.

Nowhere near the heyday of the three major networks competing and each flying their own helicopters and yadda yadda. Now they’re all so broke they share leased pool helicopter.

There was also a few years where some Libertarian / Exiled from political Party folks managed to get some air time on, of all things, a religious station, a morning drive time slot even, and they knew all the players in all the Parties and the back room deals going on. They were actually pretty tuned in with local politicians and businesses and knew their stuff. Got all of the best interviews and were essentially unknown that they were there on that station other than by locals and nobody could really explain why. Just someone knew someone and got a morning drive time slot.

But they eventually angered the station owner when they interviewed candidates for governor after he told them not to, over a particular topic, so he fired all of them and put the utterly boring milquetoast afternoon fill in guy who would kick his boots, in the prime spot.

Once in a great while CPR does panels on their Colorado show that have enough political diversity to be interesting but it’s usually the ancient politicians saying the same old stuff.

No Denver news sources seem to truly have the pulse of business or businesspeople anymore. Even DBJ doesn’t. They definitely don’t have the contacts or the footwork to find the scandals and deeper stories locally anymore.

Like most journalism these days, it’s all focused on a tiny few in DC. Boring as ****. We had a LOT of years with top notch journalists and lots of competition to keep them all motivated, but those days are long long gone.
 
Speaking of poor editorial standards, how's this for a headline? Found on Fox News. I'd like to see it!

Iowa woman fatally shot by cop in front of toddler to receive $2 million settlement
 
So who is getting the $2M settlement? Sounds like the cop would have done better to shoot the Editor.
 
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