The Newspaper Crisis Hits Atlanta, Again
Last year the AJC cut its circulation area and cut a bunch of reporters, shifting many of what were left into its online offering. It abandoned national and international news to AP, saying it was going to focus on local news.
It just announced that its news staff will be further reduced to 350 (from last year’s 500).
That local angle? Now, it is cutting all of its area sections, which now appear a couple of times a week.
It is planning a revamped Sunday paper that will appear sometime early next year. Rumored to be gone is the opinion section called @Issue.
So, what is left? Copied national news. Copied international news. Reduced local news. No editorial section. (Rick, there is no threat to get rid of the funny papers.) Sudoko apparently will survive. The AJC still puts Parade Magazine in the Sunday package, thank God (heavy sarcasm).
I suppose I am as much to blame as anyone for this. I get the Sunday paper because it is part of my life. I don’t buy during the week because I read it online or get it in print to read at lunch (there's usually one laying around at the restaurant). Even there, I’m guilty lately. The newsstand price was just increased to seventy-five cents. I, for the most part, don’t buy it now because, I’ve read most of it online and don’t want to pay the extra quarter. If I want to read a newspaper at lunch, I’ve been buying USAToday – mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Readers like me, were the heart of newspapers in print. Readers like me, are leaving newspapers in print. And I’m pissed because, as we abandon them, they are abandoning us.
11 comments:
It's sad, but everything changes. I subscribed to the AJC for a long time out of habit and having been interested in journalism for a long while, @ $10/mo it was a pretty mild hit on the paycheck, but the stacks of unread papers were piling up. I've found that I get most of my news from links from social networking sites and online in general. AJC puts EVERYTHING online. Why pay for it?
They pissed me off years ago when they folded the afternoon paper. I do still (as noted) buy the paper for the comic strips. That Jeremy dude (Zits) is really a hoot.
That's pretty much how I feel these days. By the time I read something in the newspaper, odds are I've already seen it online.
Newspapers aren't good for much besides local news these days. The Tennessean, a Gannett newspaper, simply reprints the majority of its national and world news from USA Today.
It's getting harder and harder to find good, unbiased news sources.
News with commentary is easy to come by; facts are not.
They just did the same thing to the St Petersburg Times. There is very little local news and the funny papers, horoscope and Ann Landers are scattered throughout the want ads. I just hate it!
They still have all their biased sports writers. :rolleyes: Whatever.
People,
I find I support my newspaper by buying the Sunday paper. You brainy types buy it for the content. You missing the point of the Sunday paper!
COUPONS, yes wonderful coupons. If you shop right you can safe a lot on groceries and get back the price you paid for the newspaper.
Ya know you guys do have a point I guess I could buy it an read the 1/2 truth content that fills the other 100 pages of the paper.
In my house, growing up, the newspaper was something we got for the comics, for movie listings, and for local sports coverage. That was it.
Although our dogs, who started out with paper training before house training soon found another use for them, if we did not stack the paper up quickly enough.
And we were not great housekeepers, so that often was not the case.
So for me, there are a great many negative family of origin type associations with the print paper.
I have preferred online for as long as I have had access to it, since it is pretty rare that a dog piddles all over a computer, and a computer rarely gets shredded and strewn throughout the house.
I just realized that the main reason I don't read the paper is because I can't stand the inky/dirt it leaves on my hands. For an OCD freak like me, that has to be the biggest benefit of getting my news online.
I too, cancelled my daily subscription now that I read most my news online.
But nothing beats sitting down in the morning and reading the paper... I guess you reminded me that I haven't done that in a while.
I probably won't renew my subscription when it runs out. I've usually read most of what interests me online before I get the print edition. Lots of days, all I look at is the Mutts comic. Then the rest of it piles up for days and makes me feel guilty for not reading it.
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