Is there a thread for the rapid death of the newspaper industry?

Ha. Fair enough.

There is nothing like reading a newspaper in its hard copy form. However, I have found from sniffing around that if your online paper looks like a newspaper, people might find your news more substantial. I have been reading the Pantagraph lately because it looks great. By the way, this paper is 172 years old!

the cartoon is an onion parody btw, just in case it's not clear who is being a suppurating fucking bell-end here.

Oh! I'd consider blushing, but ... er, actually, I'm not sure it works as a parody either.

<Looks again>

OK. Might not be as offensively shit, but it's still shit. Unless there's some fabulous piece of context in which it should be viewed?

Fabulous piece of context = most US political cartoonists.

Christ, really? *Boggles*. OK, in that case I'm going to step back ... there are some holes in my knowledge I'm happy to keep. Apologies to the Onion cartoonist, but to be honest: you might actually be better simply using your pen to go around stabbing some of your contemporaries in the neck.

Chuck Asay died for your sins: batshit rightwing cartoonists 2009

^ Threads I have never opened and never intend to, #26. And I think this little exchange has really, really impressed upon me how many tears of blood I would weep if I did.

never read it either

You're missing out

There is nothing like reading a newspaper in its hard copy form. However, I have found from sniffing around that if your online paper looks like a newspaper, people might find your news more substantial. I have been reading the Pantagraph lately because it looks great. By the way, this paper is 172 years old!

#462 in the series of things I never thought I would see referenced on ILX. I grew up in a tiny shit town in McLean County, so that was pretty much the only paper I even saw for a good chunk of my youth. I always thought the mustachioed Bill Flick was hilarious when I was 12.

i still don't understand that onion cartoon

tomorrow is the final print edition of the seattle post-intelligencer. 146 years...

the final print edition

(sings)

I gave my love a newspaper, with no paaaay-per.

seattle post-intelligencer

<Doffs cap, sadly>

Seattle P-I Editor and Publisher Roger Oglesby addressed staff in the newsroom Monday morning. Here are his remarks:

Tonight we'll be putting the paper to bed for the last time. But the bloodline will live on.

Hearst is announcing today that the P-I will become an online-only news operation. The last print edition will appear tomorrow.

We have copies of the press release for you, as well as a letter from (The Hearst Corp. CEO) Frank Bennack and (Hearst Newspapers President) Steve Swartz. But first I have just a couple of things to say.

This is a hard day for all of us. We were fortunate to be part of a great newspaper with a great tradition, and we've been blessed to be part of a wonderful group of talented people. We all hate to see that end.

But we knew it was coming. Hearst fought for years to keep this place going, but time and these rotten economic conditions finally caught up with us.

But there's another part to the story, and I'm not going to let you forget it. It's the part that has to do with what will live on and who's responsible for it. Tomorrow, SeattlePI.com will be reborn, outside the JOA. It will continue, and it will thrive, and it will be a strong and vital voice of this city for years to come.

Some of you will part of that ongoing effort, and you have an exciting road ahead of you. But we should all remember that everybody at this paper helped to build SeattlePI.com and the foundation on which its future will rest. Every one of you, everyone at this paper, should take pride in that. I will, and you should, too.

As for the paper, tonight will be the final run. So let's do it right. This is a great newspaper and has been for a long time. Let's show the world it still is. Let's show them what we can do, one more time.

http://www.seattlepi.com/business/403793_piclosure17.html

145 editorial jobs going, only 20 to remain. rip.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/03/16/inside_and_outside_the_p_i

http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd118/embarchie/2008606173.jpg http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd118/embarchie/pi_globe01.jpg

http://www.vintageseattle.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/seattle_pi_01.jpg

estimated 2010 numbers

From the Stranger piece linked above:

In one of the areas that remained populated, page designers ("Of which none will be kept," a guide said)

WELL, NO SHIT. If there aren't any pages to design ...

Mind you, perhaps they could hire one to design a new banner for future save-newspapers rallies. This one's the worst I've ever seen:

http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2009/03/16/1237256847-rally5.jpg

Still. Got a new display name out of it.

the number of former and/or aspiring newspaper/alt-weekly people i know who can't find jobs or have been forced out of their old ones is reaching really pretty alarming levels. and people i know who are still employed are dealing with unpaid furloughs and all that shit.

and people i know who are still employed are dealing with unpaid furloughs and all that shit

*Waves, cheerlessly*

True, in our (ultimately Gannett-owned) place these are voluntary. And it suits me: going part-time halved my salary, so I'm not going to notice the cost of a few extra days' holiday. But still. The whole game is F U C K E D and I'm under no illusions about that.

from today's P-I
http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2009/03/17/1237329845-piobit.jpg

True, in our (ultimately Gannett-owned) place these are voluntary

Really? My gf works for a Gannett-owned newspaper and the furloughs are mandatory for everyone.

http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2009/03/16/1237268560-piphotodoctored.jpg

gallows lol, thx

Really? My gf works for a Gannett-owned newspaper and the furloughs are mandatory for everyone

I'm in the UK, though. From what I understand, employment law here means they can't make it mandatory.

That said: senior managers are all taking a week's unpaid leave with no questions asked, or so we're told.

clay shirky, not comforting, but otm:

Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

...Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.

Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism
Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism
Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism

So, so, so fucking OTM. Sadly, we're going to end up with neither.

Have Instapapered the piece and will read later. Thanks, Tipsy.

the internet has such a fucked up way of rewarding. it's the linkers that get all the revenue, which is a business that basically costs nothing to maintain, while the sources of the actual content, which is expensive, get nothing.

Well, yes, but those sources were the ones who decided 10 years ago to start giving everything away for free, in the hope that the Magic Money Fairy would visit them with some revenue-creating ideas further down the line. I'm not saying they necessarily had much choice, but there wasn't a great deal of thought went into it -- and, with this being the newspaper industry, editors and proprietors weren't keen to discuss the problem with each other.

Basically: the situation is fucked. It doesn't matter how it got fucked. All that matters is that it is. For everyone.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45593000/gif/_45593096_newspaper_totals_466.gif

2010s = The Decade of Misinformation (like, more than ever)

I think we'll figure something out after the 2010s, but it will be roughly a decade before this happens.

UK national newspapers have misinformed as much (maybe even as gravely) as our government for as long as i can remember

It is very strange that newspapers rushed headlong into providing all their content for free.

I'm still surprised to see "print" links below articles on, say, Vanity Fair, or the NY Daily News, or the NY Times. Allowing people to read online for free is bad enough, but then providing a specially-formatted page so that people can print off exactly the articles they want to read without paying you a penny? It's bizarre.

Well, this is the only silver lining. Archaic newspapers that suck will finally die too.

Unfortunately, many newspapers thought that making most of their journalists' jobs be press release writers contributed to this.

but then providing a specially-formatted page so that people can print off exactly the articles they want to read without paying you a penny? It's bizarre.

but surely it's unfeasible to provide an obstacle to people printing online documents anyway?

You don't have to make it THAT easy.

Various newspapers did try various paying models. They didn't work.

They did, if you consider them taking their tops off, work.

It was hard for them to make pay work while all their competitors were offering free substitutes. The ones that had no or few substitutes -- WSJ, FT -- have made pay work.

There's still a massive oversupply just now, but after many more papers have died, that's going to fall sharply. It's then we'll find out whether or not people will pay for traditional journalism. I suspect not, but I'm cynical.

But isn't it that that no one ever really paid for traditional journalism, at least in the sense that newsstand sales and subscriptions always fell far short of operating costs?

but that's the whole thing: net ad revenue is a fraction of ye olde print ad revenue.

Right.