Shrinkage
It looks like Detroit's two papers, the News and the Free Press, may soon be offering abbreviated versions and not delivering daily. Print journalism is in trouble, but the point of a paper is daily, dependable service of a quality good. If they don't offer what makes them unique, it'll be that much easier to remove them from our lives.
Newsweek is having similar problems and its plan is to serve a more select audience. Or is that just giving up and not admitting it? Didn't Spinal Tap's manager Ian Faith make a similar argument--that the band wasn't less popular, it's appeal was just becoming more selective?
posted by LAGuy @ 12:44 AM
2 Comments:
The Rocky Mountain News, which would be celebrating its 150th year of continuous publishing next year, is up for sale and will either be sold or shut down within a few months. The News is already owned by the same joint operating company as the Denver Post, which has also been around a long time. They united a few years ago when it was clear that they couldn't both continue and be profitable.
The News is the more conservative paper, the Post the more liberal, but both have significant bias and I don't read either. We get the weekend News for a convenient movie listing.
Personally, I get my written news from the Wall Street Journal (generally short and concise on regular news). I just don't see how local city newspapers will survive much longer.
The News and the Free Press had a JOA (which I opposed) as well. There's just too much alternative media, cheaper and more convenient (for getting news and placing ads) that, even if younger people were reading papers, there'd still be trouble. The print media has been ailing for quite a while, and the internet is merely the coup de grace.
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