Ernie: What amazes me is how successful newspaper internet sites manage to screw up their good sites in order to pursue novelty gimmicks. The WTimes printing white on black background, for example, or the Jerusalem Post with its new video feature which adds a full minute to download time -for something that, as I see it, has close to zero value. Or the CSMonitor with its very user unfriendly print feature that freezes your computer if you happen to want to reformat, or the Times of India which splashes a large ad across the news which you need to get rid of if you want to actually read the stories. And there is more. As if news people --to call them that-- are part of a grand conspiracy to make newspaper reading into torture which deliberately alienates readers. This said, I think you have the figures reversed as far as costs go. The main reason for news room cutbacks is cost, which is also why foreign correspondents are now an endangered species, along with investigative reporters. Sure, printing and distribution is an expense, and some years paper itself is a major expenditure, but we have shadow news rooms now because of a drive which is nationwide to trim news gathering ( also news analysis ) staffs to the bone because of all the money it was costing. But maybe the best way to deal with this is to do some definitive research. Could be we both are right and both are wrong. depending on how you look at the problem. Billy ========================================== In a message dated 3/12/2010 5:53:58 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, [email protected] writes:
Hi Billy, Sent from my iPhone On Mar 12, 2010, at 17:14, [email protected] wrote: > This is NOT a justification of all newspapers and how they operate. > As maybe you know, I often am highly critical, as a matter of > fact. But efficiency is not exactly something that a news > organization can do much about. To gather and > publish news is labor intensive, and when it is done right the > public service provided is invaluable. Heck, I'd call it socially > necessary. Yes and no. My understanding is that 1. The actual cost of newsgathering is low compared to the overhead of printing and distribution, and that 2. Most papers still make an operating profit, but are financially crippled by the dent they took on during merger mania the last decade. I completely agree with you that "economization" is a lousy strategy in terms of it's impact on quality, but it really is pathetic how few newspapers have seriously explored how to use the efficiency of the Internet to improve news delivery (vs. Support their existing biz model). E _______________________________________________ Centroids mailing list: [email protected] http://radicalcentrism.com/mailman/listinfo/centroids_radicalcentrism.com Archives at http://radicalcentrism.org/pipermail/centroids_radicalcentrism.com/
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