Newspapers Are Committing Suicide

April/30/2009 2:18AM
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We all know the Internet is hurting the newspaper business. The economy is hurting ad revenue. Since all they print is left-wing liberal drivel they cut their market since some readers aren’t interested in the slanted perspective.

In the 6 months through March the statistics show The USA Today is down 7.5%. I am a subscriber to USA Today. I spend part of the year in IL and part in AZ. They can’t get the address change right. I go on line and use their address change tool. I set the date to stop delivery in AZ and to start delivery in IL. The start date was Monday. They don’t have it right on Wednesday. On Tuesday I received a mailed Monday’s paper. In both places I have always had home delivery. Every time I switch they try to use mail delivery. Every time I have to threaten to stop my subscription to get them to do it right. Now, if you were losing 7.5% of your business every six month, going broke, and worried, wouldn’t you get this part of your business right?

The Wall Street Journal is up 0.6% for the same six month period. Their track record is the same as the USA Today with my deliveries. They were to begin delivery on Monday. Still no paper on Wednesday. They, at least, mail the same day’s paper on the same day. But, my file, they acknowledge, says no mail, if you can’t get it to my driveway in the early morning, I’m not interested. This paper critiques how business gets done. Wouldn’t you think they would get their own business right?

There are many businesses in this country that have never learned how to do business in tough times.The golf industry is another.They have never gotten the customer aspect right. The PGA doesn’t teach how to do business. Club pros don’t do much right. For years this industry enjoyed boom times. Now, they are grossly overbuilt and demand is sinking fast. Courses across the country are closing every day. It’s too late to fix it. The next generation is not playing.

Newspapers have no clue why their business is sinking.They will all go out of business before they try. Again, they are run by newspaper people, staffed almost totally by employees of the same ideology, and clueless about modern business practices. I seriously doubt they do any consumer research at all. If they did, they would not have a workforce that all thinks alike. If they did they would be trying to appeal to a broader market. If they did, they would find ways to offset the Internet. If they did, they would resolve delivery problems to the few customers they have left.

The New York time won 5 Pulitzer Prizes. Good for them. Maybe they can get the people who vote for the Pulitzer to pay a few million each for a year’s subscription. Otherwise, they will be gone. Maybe as soon as year’s end.

The Chicago Tribune has cheapened the paper under Sam Zell. It’s closer to the National Inquirer than the old Trib, the World’s Greatest newspaper. It’s more left wing. They are dead and don’t know they died.

Unless, of course, they get a bailout. Some in congress are already working on a bailout. Guess, those who only get favorable press can’t live without press media. Seems a little incestuous, doesn’t it? Support the Democrats in the paper and they get bailed out with your tax dollars.

If they get bailed out will the delivery problems get better or worse?

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Comments (11)

  1. MAS1916 says:

    These institutions are crippled by their leftist arrogance.

    People don’t want to be emotionally connected to the storylines. People want real information. Real information requires real work and not simply taking information that is spoon-fed by political leaders.

    Obama’s press conference was a great example. Not one meaningful follow up question was attempted. Emanuel of course forbids follow ups, but with all previous Presidents, the journalists present at least attempted them.

    They left many important questions ‘unasked.’
    http://firstconservative.com/blog/conservative-blogs/obama-press-conference-unasked-questions

  2. Mac says:

    I have little sympathy for the liberal mainstream media. USA Today should adopt a new moniker: All The Worthless Tripe That’s Unfit To Print — but we’ll do it anyway because you’re too stupid to know the difference. The only sources of reliable news these days is Fox News and the internet.

    To the news media, I say good bye and good riddence!

  3. Chris Johnson says:

    Gee… must have been a slow news day.

    Newspapers are being killed by the internet. By the time the paper ends up at the end of the driveway, it is already old news.

    Your suggestion that <> doesn’t seem accurate to me. You need to separate the news pages from the editorial pages.

    I read the Chicago Tribune, delivered to my driveway (they don’t bother getting it to the door anymore, like I did when I was a paperboy growing up), daily and don’t see this liberal bias that you speak of. I do read, on an almost daily basis, about the massive corruption in Cook County and the State of Illinois on both the news pages and the editorial page. That, to me, is valuable reporting and it helps shape my voting habits. No incumbents in county or state government earned my vote in the last election. None will earn it in 2010 either, the way things are going.

    This is no knock on blogs, cuz I like to read them (especially yours!), but people aren’t reading newspapers anymore BECAUSE they are relatively unbiased, not because of their perceived bias. Nowdays, people only go to their favored biased sites…. many ONLY get their "news" from blogs! No offense, but if someone only read your blog, they’d think that Josef Stalin was president and our country had been renamed the United Socialist States of America (USSA).

    I love to share my political opinions with others, but I also want to make sure that my opinions are shaped by facts not just other opinions. That is why I read newspapers.

  4. Chris Johnson says:

    opps… sorry…. my third paragraph should have read:

    Your suggestion that doesn’t seem accurate to me. You need to separate the news pages from the editorial pages.

    Guess I should have hit "Preview Post" first!

  5. Chris Johnson says:

    sorry…. I don’t know why this cut/paste thing isn’t working today! your blog must have thought my brackets were HTML commands…. I’m not that smart!

    third paragraph should be:

    Your suggestion that "all they print is left-wing liberal drivel" doesn’t seem accurate to me. You need to separate the news pages from the editorial pages.

  6. Bill Robertson says:

    Chris:
    Statistics prove the is a left wing bias in the media. You obviously haven’t read the statistics on how much more coverage Obama has received in the first 100 days than either Clinton or W. Nor, the percentage of the coverage that has been positive vs. the other two. It will keep getting worse until they are all gone.

    Of course, you wouldn’t see those statistics in the Tribune or on network TV.

    Bill Robertson

  7. Chris Johnson says:

    I read for my news. Television news whether network or cable is simply an exercise in who can shout the loudest and none of it is worth my time. I don’t share your view that there is any liberal bias on the NEWS pages of most newspapers. We would all be much better off if we turned TV news off completely and read.

  8. Bill Robertson says:

    Chris:

    So, all the statistics on the New York Times are just hogwash. You should really be reading the Times before it goes away. There are only a few of you left who don’t seem to see the bias.

    Bill

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