AnnArbor.com has put up a story about a new study (these studies are where the money in journalism is today) of the fate of print journalism versus the online product.
The comments are good and blunt as well. The content czar's answer to one poster about the hiring of new AnnArbor journalists is one that any politician would love. Vague and non-committal.
When my friends from the Journal read the study conclusions they, like me, will recognize that the very people who are now embracing the study are the same ones who did exactly the opposite of what they should have when the opportunity was right to change things.
The biggest contradiction in all of this is the notion that AnnArbor.com is going to survive online only. Not true, the reason why they are printing a newspaper on a regular basis is to make money. The dirty little secret is that even the AnnArbor.com folks know the only way to still make money is to print a newspaper with ads to pay for the online operation.
Newspapers dead, not hardly.
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". . . and that there are newspapers that aren't going to survive, even though their communities and their ownership care about them and don't want that to happen."
Their ownership care about them????
Welcome to last week, Tony. Or, more accurately, welcome to about 1998 when it comes to Newhouse. If ownership cared about the four properties on this side of the state, it would not have put up with the garbage product that has become worse and worse over the past several years. It would have perhaps brought in some new, outside blood at the leadership level, as opposed to just moving around the usual suck-ups from position to position time after time after time.
No, Tony, if ownership cared, it would have found a way to have made money off of the 44,291 papers the Ann Arbor News still managed to sell M-F as of March 31, 2009 (source: ABC 6-month report). But, according to you, Tony, that is apparently not the case.
Ownership has thrown each and every one of these properties right under the bus, Tony, and you know it. We know it. The communities know it. Everyone knows it. Just because you've cleared the standard for mandatory butt kissing all these years doesn't mean you have to lie to us.
If this is the best you can do, Tony, just put down the pom pons and shut up. No one's impressed.
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