This past week Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the publisher and chairman of the NY Times, told a group of attendees at the International Newsroom Summit that “We will stop printing the New York Times sometime in the future, date TBD.” For some time now we’ve known that the Times would be changing its revenue model to a paywall to help support and sustain an all digital edition. The question back then was whether Sulzberger would continue the print edition that blankets the nation and world. I guess we now have our answer and would definitely signal the new course of media to an all digital model. Read more…
Yesterday I got my San Antonio Business Journal in the mail. It crowded my mailbox along with the other mail since I had been gone for three days to SXSWi. While I enjoy the content I am now on a quest to turn of that weekly flow of newsprint to my home. You see until I started subscribing to it I had successfully stopped both my Express-News and New York Times print editions and read them electronically along with Texas Monthly, Texas Highways, Business Week, and U.S News and World Report using Zinio. Where I used to recycle weekly it takes a good month to build up enough to bundle up and recycle. Read more…
Friday I attended a session at SXSW titled “The Ecosystem of News” presented by Steven Johnson, author of The Ghost and several other books. The session focused on the status of traditional media in a world that has become so connected with the largest number of content authors than ever before. Johnson compared the news media environment to an ecosystem where everything has some sort of effect on the other elements of the system. The question becomes what role each element plays within the ecosystem and what elements survive changes in the system. In other words, will traditional media survive these dynamic changes? Read more…
There has been a lot of buzz about a recent entry by 24/7 Wall Street entitled “The Ten Major Newspapers That Will Fold Or Go Digital Next.” It’s one of the more indepth reviews of major newspapers in America and their possible fate. One of the daily papers listed is the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The potential hope for this paper would be to merge with the Dallas Morning News and create a regional paper. Some see this as a welcome move and others lament the loss of a local paper focused on Fort Worth issues. Read more…
Newspapers are facing a challenging dilemma these days. Subscriptions and ad revenues continue to fall and costs continue to rise. Faced with mounting losses many daily newspapers are faced with a decision to either continue to operate in the red, drastically cut services or close shop entirely. The later is possibly the worst scenario since many cities are now down to one daily newspaper after consolidations in the early ’90s occurred.
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In an opinion piece in today’s Express-News public editor Bob Richter talks about changes that are coming to the newspaper that will have effect on the amount of content to be delivered. Just as other businesses are facing challenging times due to the financial crisis so is the Express-News. Richter mentioned that buyouts have been offered to employees and a hiring and wage freeze is no in effect. But the most troubling of the changes is the reduction in 32 pages from the paper weekly. Read more…
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