Plenty of rumors made their way to my e-mail in the past month. Many have to do with rumblings that there may be some added print days at one or more of the papers who had their print days reduced to three days a week.
Also some information that printing at the Flint plant will end as soon as the current contract with the printer's union expires.
I noted that there has been a changing of the guard in my former column - Off Beat.
It does my heart good that the column that I started without prompting or encouragement by any editor in 1990 remains a feature in the Flint Journal nine years after I stopped writing it and two years after I left the paper.
My best wishes to the guy who replaced me and now the woman who replaced him.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
I was at a business in Bay City on Saturday and a group of 50-ish people were comparing notes about seven-day newspapers in Bay City, Saginaw and Flint going away. Two of the people said they canceled their Bay City Times subscriptions and instead signed up for the Midland Daily News.
A focus group of two does not a trend make, but it's certainly another bit of anecdotal evidence that there are people who want a physical paper seven days a week if they're going to go to the trouble of subscribing.
Because the FJ seems to be in the hiring mode, its seems like a good candidate for an announcement of added printed paper days. That's not to say they should add more days yet, only that -- like GM's presumptuous and even somewhat controversial announcement of big production increases in 2010 -- they might be jumping the gun and even returing to their old ways -- before the crash and burn. Several pundits, rightly, called GM out this week for resuming bad habits, bad behaviors and bad business decisions. GM denied it, of course, but it was all pretty obvious. Such an entrenched culture dies hard. Back to the FJ, my guess is that even if it is the paper that adds more print production days, it'll end up cutting those back again within the next year or two. The Flint area's economy simply can't support it, despite all of the UM-Flint-Saves Downtown Flint, Land Bank Saves Flint, Proposed Flint Transportation Hub Saves Flint and New Mayor Saves Flint headlines, and FJ management delusions about a permanent recovery. Things are still really bad out there, and a couple of nice new restaurants does not a recovery make. Period. All that said, I do think that better the FJ make a last stand trying to put out a print product than moving more and more toward an online-only product that is doomed to fail due to an unsustainable growth model and insufficient online advertising revenues. Question: if the FJ adds one or more print days, and it adds staff accordingly, can it or would it call back some of the verteran reporters who they bought out and/or forced out? Or do their buyout agreements somehow preclude a return to the paper? BTW, can anyone say whether the editor finally has left? The reason I ask is in some recent FJ article, it still referred to his supposed female replacement as the community editor, not the editor. If he IS still there, how can they hire his wife as a reporter? If he is not there, did they abolish the editor's position? I swear I just saw her referred to as community editor. He was editor. Or IS editor ...
It is obvious to me that they have no idea what they are doing. They have done nothing to help preserve and sustain current jobs for any length of time. Whoever thinks they are safe are sadly mistaken.
This company will use the remaining personel that is left until they can't use them anymore. I am willing to bet that they are making a lot of money at the moment.
Sadly they will never get the lost circulation back because they alienated the very body that supported the business.
"The customer"
The top Flint newsroom position is now Community Editor
The copy desk jobs Jackson was looking to inexplicably hire was halted out of the blue. No one there will talk. Merger with Kalamazoo on the table? What's the word out there?
Jim,
Heard the rumors, now confirmed by open enrollment period, that Booth will make employees pay for healh coverage?
Here is a story from one of my company's publications that may be of interest to some of you.
Local TV Garners Revenue From Obituaries
With Papers Printing Less Often, CBS Affiliate Taps a New Revenue Stream
by Brian Steinberg
Published: October 19, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- From death sometimes comes life: A CBS affiliate in Saginaw, Mich., is generating revenue by running on-air and online obituary ads after three of the region's four daily newspapers reduced publication to three days a week. The venture could make obits "one of our top billers within two years," said Jeff Guilbert, general sales manager of WNEM.
For $100, the station will run the deceased's name and photo on-air and publish a full-length obituary on ObitMichigan.com. Full-screen graphics listing names of people who have passed away are broadcast during the local station's morning and noon shows Monday through Friday, as well as on weekend morning shows. Viewers are pushed to the website for more information about the deceased as well as funeral-services information.
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=139747
Post a Comment