OMG The local newspaper just called me and offered me 6 months for $35

[proud2BlibKansan]

Are newspapers suffering or what? I told the guy I read you on line every day. And I also read several other papers online. He said great then you are already a fan.

I almost feel bad. They can't possibly turn a profit when they give the paper away for 20 cents a day.

[Gato Moteado]

1. what paper is it?

nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. KC Star

[Gato Moteado]

15. i'm not familiar with it.....

.....but if it's just another lame-ass paper, you shoulda told them you'll subscribe when they start printing real news.

when i lived in austin, every time some austin american statesmen booth was hawking subscriptions i told them when they stop being a tool of the republican party and start printing real news, then i'll buy a subscription. until then they can kiss my ass.

the statesman endorsed bush in 2000 and 2004....in austin, a progressive city, that seemed a bit ridiculous to me. i hope the statesman goes under one of these days. they suck.

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. It isn't too bad

They have endorsed Dems and they print a majority of pro dem, anti-bush LTTEs. If not, I wouldn't have agreed to subscribe.

[Gato Moteado]

22. ah, well, then that's cool

i still hope the austin american statesman folds. what a crappy paper.

[proud2BlibKansan]

23. That is really disappointing

I love Austin. But I will remember not to buy a newspaper next time I am in town.

[REP]

36. It Makes a Mighty Fine Cage Liner Indeed

The Star is lame; always has been.

[Terran]

24. The KC Star is a good paper

as is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. We're lucky here that both our big city newspapers are of good quality and print honest journalism.

[Longhorn]

3. After 30 years as a subscriber, I cancelled our paper after they endorsed

Bush in 2004. I don't miss it at all, especially the pile of papers that have to be taken to recycling.

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. Well this is a decent paper

They endorsed Kerry.

It is just easier to read it online. And cheaper:)

[Cassandra]

4. They don't just make money from subscribers.

Most of the profit is from advertising. Some trade press publications are entirely funded by advertisers and given away free, as is the Village Voice.

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. Well that's good

It also explains all the damn popups on their website.

[SteppingRazor]

9. The Voice, and for that matter, every alternative weekly in the country...

Every big city has at least one, after all. Hell, the Voice was one of the last to go free, about 15 years ago. By that time, it was only doing what every other altweekly in the country already was.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. The free papers here are pretty shitty

[SteppingRazor]

5. Newspapers make almost no money off subscriptions...

They make their money in advertising.

[SharonAnn]

11. High subscription number allow them to charge more for ads

That's the reason they want to increase the number of subscriptions. It's not because they make money off subscribers with subscription fees.

[proud2BlibKansan]

13. Wow didn't realize that

[SteppingRazor]

19. Oh, I know (I work for a newspaper)...

Higher circulation means higher ad rates... which means not just a chase for more subscriptions, but also all sorts of underhanded means to inflate circulation numbers. A few papers got in trouble with this just last year -- Long Island's Newsday and the Chicago Tribune (both Tribune Co. papers) spring immediately to mind.

But you can see it in all sorts of ways. For example, my local daily newspaper just started a Spanish paper. And for some reason, I get that paper tossed on my doorstep, despite the fact that I don't subscribe and have called and asked that they stop sending it. But, of course, they still do it -- throwing papers to random people who didn't even ask for them inflates circulation, and allows them to charge more for advertising.

[proud2BlibKansan]

21. So that explains why they throw a free one on my porch

a couple times a week.

And it is mainly ads.

[gratuitous]

18. Although their advertising rates are set by subscription numbers

If you're an advertiser, and you're looking to reach 50,000 homes in an area, what better place than the local newspaper? But if the paper doesn't have that many subscribers, you're going to spend your ad dollar somewhere else. Which is part of the reason why the Star in this case is offering a subscription for such a low rate. "See, large advertiser? We just added 10,000 new subscribers! Here's our new rate sheet."

Of course, if they can get these new subscribers to incorporate reading their paper into their morning routine, they'll keep you on as a subscriber. I used to do the same thing as a paper boy many (many!) years ago. I'd buy an extra paper or two, and bestow a free week on a house on my route for a week or two, then follow up with a personal visit to see if the folks were interested in subscribing.

[rinsd]

29. Yup.....

Even the "free" alternative daillies do this.

[SteppingRazor]

31. Well, sure... how else do you expect them to pay salaries?

Pay for the prining ot the paper?

And all the other costs that go into it. Advertising is a necessary part of the equation.

[AllegroRondo]

7. They make most of their money through advertizing

so 20 cents a day for a subscriber is no big deal.
I get the paper version of the local rag just for the crossword puzzles.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. Learn something new every day

[atommom]

14. I got a flyer from them, but haven't decided yet whether I'll subscribe.

But yeah, they can't be making money selling 7-day service for less than the price of the Sunday paper.

(I wonder whether the mysterious call I got the other day was from them? The Caller ID said "unknown," and someone was talking when I picked the phone up. I just listened. Here are a few snippets:
"And I said, that's bullshit, he needs to keep that thing in his pants."
"And she said, 'What you need to be listenin' for then?' And I said, ''Cause it's my motherfuckin' phone!'"
Alas, she hung up when I started laughing. :evilfrown: )

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. LOL

No it showed up on caller ID as KC Star. I thought they were calling about my LTTE.

[NewWaveChick1981]

16. Our local birdcage liner....er...newspaper is

extremely RW. I subscribed for about four years when we moved here, then about three years ago, I cancelled the subscription. It had gone from a reasonably balanced view to a totally RW conservative slant on everything. They called me to offer me a "come back" rate, and I declined. When they asked why, I told them. I said, "If you go back to balanced reporting, maybe I will." I check their online edition every now and then, and it's worse than before, so no more subscriptions for me.

The larger newspaper one city over is much better and is balanced.

[pretzel4gore]

25. profits, shmofits

the entire media angle is to fill the void so honest news cannot slip in and create a demand.....rev moon is losing a fortune on his Washedup Times etc, but he makes back 100 fold thanks to bush. the only reason the big media conglomerates do news at all is that if they didn't control the heights the same thing would happen, and truth is a toxic substance, literally, to these guys. imagine if the news ever came out that big media representatives met a few months prior to sept11th/01 to prepare how the 'big media' cover the event? imagine that!

[Dorian Gray]

26. They make most of their money from

advertising, not subscriptions. But, without the subscribers, they are doomed to lack advertisers, as well.

[rman]

27. the independent/free press

...which is essential to a healthy democracy.
I'd like to take the opportunity to point out that any media outlet / media organization that is dependant on advertising revenues for its survival, is not an independent medium. It has been quite a long time since media were independent, back in the days when the mechanical printing press first started to become common place.
The implication is that most media are not independent, save a very few exceptions.
Still, that doesn't mean all dependant media ar equally bad, nor that they lie all the time.


re. "it's mostly ads":
According to Noam Chomsky (and he's one to know such things), in the media industry advertising is called "content" and the rest is called "fill".
see Washington's Messianic Mission. Hampshire College. October 11, 2005.
www.traprockpeace.org/edrussell/Chomsky11October05AImedia.mp3 (mp3)

www.chomsky.info

[SteppingRazor]

30. I'm in the media industry...

and I've never heard the editorial side of a paper referred to as "fill," even by those soulless bastards over in advertising.

It could be a different story in broadcast, of course :shrug:

On edit: I also strongly, strongly disagree that a media outlet dependent on advertising revenue cannot be independent. This suggests that journalists are beholden to writing good stories about advertisers, which, at any ethical paper, is certainly not the case. In fact, I've written quite the opposite about advertisers before. And yes, advertisers have pulled ads because of what I've written. But it certainly didn't result in any negative repurcussions for me or for my longterm career. At any ethical paper, there is a wall between advertising and editorial.

[rman]

34. Since you're in the media industry,

you probably know that it's not the journalists who decide what gets to be published and what doesn't.

Journalists usually just don't write stories that don't help their career. And the editors don't select stories that won't help their career. Any ad-dependent medium just can't have to many advertisers pull their ads.
Just how much implicit and/or explicit pressure advertisers and/or owners put on a media outlet, depends on how significant the medium is wrt the formation of public opinion. There are many smaller media that can afford to be less P.C. then certain larger ones. But it's one thing to be critical of the GOP and right-leaning Dems, it's another thing to be consistently critical of US/western foreign and domestic policies in general. Only truly independent media, that are financed by their audience, can afford to do the latter.
I think IWTNEWS makes a very good case for independent media:
www.iwtnews.com

[SteppingRazor]

39. That's simply inaccurate...

I've worked for a number of papers, and at none of them have I ever been pressured not to write about something that would be taken negatively by advertisers -- naturally, you are limited by bounds of good taste, but as far as, for example, writing about unethical business practices by an advertiser, no one has ever tried to prevent a story I have written -- in my entire career, at any paper.
Now, I will grant that publicly funded media have even freer reign, along with the lack of perceived bias, but it doesn't necessarily follow that media that rely on advertising dollars are therefore biased toward certain advertisers or toward a certain political philosophy.
And even to say that journalists don't decide what gets in the paper shows something of a misunderstanding about the way the newspaper industry works. As a journalist, you come up with your own stories. Thus, at the very basic level, you decide what gets in the paper. Editors may decide whether or not you should do the story, but I've never seen editors hold a story purely for monetary reasons -- they'll hold it because they don't think its a story, they'll hold it because the journalist hasn't done enough digging, or whatever reason. But I've never seen money enter into it. And at every buudget meeting I've ever been to (that's where we decide what stories go in the next paper) there has never, ever been a single member of advertising present at the meeting.
I think you have some ideas about journalism that simply aren't the case when applied to actual newsrooms.

[rman]

40. Case in point - two, in fact:

What i've been saying in my previous posts may seem exaggerated when applied to smaller MSM, but think the following quotes show that it's not entirely inaccurate:


Mary Mapes, former CBS 60 minutes producer
Larry King Live
re. AWOL/Dan Rather
http://thepoliticalteen.com/video/mapeslk.wmv (video - wmv)
"...a CBS executive (said) to me "Mary don't you know how many millions of dollars Viacom spends every year on lobbying in Washington, and nothing you have done in the past year has helped."

(Viacom owns CBS http://www.nowfoundation.org/issues/communications/tv/mediacontrol.html)

=====

Jeff Cohen, former senior producer on MSNBC's "Donahue", founder of FAIR
IWTNEWS
http://www.iwtnews.com/videoplayer/jeff_cohen (video - mov)
"...when the Phil Donahue show was canceled a memo circulated - i'm quoting from an internal memo that was never supposed to be public - the memo read "Donahue represents a difficult public voice for NBC in a time of war, he seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush, and skeptical of the administration's motives".

We can only guess where that memo came from. Fact is that MSNBC is owned by General Electric (http://www.nowfoundation.org/issues/communications/tv/mediacontrol.html), which has much greater interests in this (or any) war than MSNBC could ever have.

from the same clip:
"If you're a journalist who's paycheck comes from GE or from Murdoch, as my paycheck did, you learn that there are stories that won't be helpful to your career. Certain stories about the environment, certain stories about war profiteering, and certainly stories about media conglomeration, will not help your career. So you learn as a journalist to self-sensor."
- Jeff Cohen

=====

I don't think it is coincidence that two major media voices critical of the Bush administration and the corporate world are no longer there. It's not in the interest of the public, but it is very convenient to the powers that be.
Owners of- and advertisers in smaller media have smaller interests, so there the effect of those interests will not be as strong and presumably less harmful and less obvious then in the big MSM outlets.
Either way such decisions are not made in the news rooms but in the board rooms of the (few) corporations that own the bulk of the MSM.

[zbdent]

28. Knight-Ridder just recently assured that the media would be consolidated

into the hands of a very elite, uber-rich few . . .

Unions offered to buy some of the newspapers (Akron Beacon Journal being one of them), but K-R decided "No, we don't want to sell piece-meal", you had to buy them all or none.

Exit "liberal" media . . . K-R was the faction which did the "Here's the progression of how Bush sold the Iraq war myths" last year . . .

[Th1onein]

32. Newspapers don't make profit by selling their papers

They make profit off of selling advertising. Advertisers look at circulation numbers, ie., the number of paid subscribers that a newspaper has. The more subscribers, the more for the advertisement.

[PassingFair]

33. We had a HUGE newspaper strike around here...

about 10 years ago.
Man, the wounds are still fresh.
The Detroit News and FreePress were merged, and they busted the union. Hired scabs. Some columnists crossed the picket lines, and it got ugly.

Years later, after the union was no more, the columnists were hired back, and the marketing campaign took off. "The strike is over", the telemarketers said.

The whole thing left such a sour taste in my mouth that I STILL will not suscribe.
AND there are STILL signs up in my neighborhood that say "NO SCAB PAPERS".

[michreject]

37. I stopped reading the papers

Because of that strike. The papres pulled some nasty shit to the strikers. Professional head busters.

[Raydawg1234]

35. They make most of their money on advertising

[trotsky]

38. I have mixed emotions about the struggles of newspapers.

On the one hand, it's been terrible over the last few years seeing most major newspapers being bought up by multimedia conglomerates. But on the other, that means the few who survive are putting out worse and worse journalism. If the corporate consolidation of the mainstream media ends up destroying it, maybe that isn't such a bad thing. Especially now with the Internet we have alternate unbiased sources.