'Everything's on the table'

Catching up on the latest news ...

FEAR
Some good quotes from this article in the Editor and Publisher.

There's one good reason for the industry's new openness to change — fear, says Drew Davis, president and executive director of the American Press Institute (API): "I have never seen so many senior newspaper executives so depressed and frightened for their future."

"They used to say, 'Tell me who's doing this, and if it's working to increase readership.' Now what they say is, 'Tell me who's doing this — and making money at it.' Everyone wants promises that risks they take will bring in dollars — and, of course, nobody can do that."

"He said, 'We are like drowning people, who are treading water as fast as we can. And you people are throwing life preservers' — he meant it in the form of Newspaper Next — 'and we can't even get our hands out of the water to reach them.'

"What we're lacking right now is really philosophical thinking. If this is a seminal crisis, then we have to do some seminal thinking. And it really does have to be radical."

So everything is on the table, anything goes, because everyone's trying to keep afloat, make ends meet (and keep the sceptical shareholders happy).

What's good about this article is that it takes a hard look at the real dire state of the US newspaper industry and how it is struggling to adapt to the cost-cutting and to produce a product with a lot less people.

1. a look at the deep cuts at the Tribune after the change in management
2. suggestions that some days of the week would be dropped (eg. no more Monday papers)
3. getting rid of feature stories on low-circulation days (and maybe even the reporter)
4. there's also cutbacks in marketing, advertising sales and research
5. don't chase non-readers - leave the paper for those who would read it for 25 years or more, and websites for the younger audiences


Another article - this one from Baltimore - looks at how some media companies are turning to niche publications as the way of the future.