Guess it should come as no surprise, papers were suffering before the downturn in the economy, but its still sad to see.
“The Dispatch is reducing the size of its newsroom, laying off 45 people effective on April 3, management of the newspaper announced today.”
via The Columbus Dispatch : ‘Dispatch’ announces 45 layoffs on editorial staff.
Made me think back to the last season of The Wire (I know another Wire reference – I thought we were past that!) While that season was the most criticized and probably a bit out of touch with recent times it did help show the demise of the American paper and the role a newspaper played or could play in a community…anyway.
The problem is of course multifaceted, internet, longer commutes by car, TV time rather than reading mean that there are less readers, with less time and who have plenty of other options. The problem is that blogs and other cheaper to produce operations lack some of the quality control that we have gotten used to and the investigative resources. (Maybe we are ushering in a new era of investigative bloggers?). Anyway, I do feel bad that I canceled my Dispatch subscription a year ago, although I read online, but it was slowing me down on the weekdays and often times left a huge bin of newspapers that were barely read (I have read print media is better for the environment then online – due to huge electric usage – but it still made me think I was creating waste – at my peak I had two 7 days a week subscriptions, one to Dispatch and on to NY Times) Right now I only get the NY Times in print 3 days a week (I would like more but as I said, it piled up during the week) and tons of magazines that I don’t get through (not even the Economist sadly these days gets its deserved full reading).
That said who knows, the times may shift the business to shift their thinking, lean times can lead to great creativity and getting more done with less. I always thought the Dispatch website look pretty junky and I would be willing to pay for a better site, although knowing others reading habits I know this wouldn’t bring in many others.
