Shrinking Newspapers

I read Attywood (of the Philadelphia Daily) frequently; why I do that is irrelevant to this post. He frequently decries the impending death of his media, and more or less acknowledges that it has a component that is self imposed. Then he says something like this in his post today,

It's called a printred [sic] newspaper, and every year fewer and fewer people are buying it, because they prefer the free-flowing ways of the World Wide Web.

Perhaps; and perhaps fewer people are buying it because it is an increasingly crappy product. I can read my entire Sunday, repeat Sunday, paper in twenty five minutes. Most of that is spent on the sports section. Most of the front page is unedited AP articles I read online two days ago. The editorials are ones I read in the NY Times three or four days ago.

The few articles written locally are so poorly crafted that after three or four paragraphs I still do not know what the article is about. The good writers have all been retired or fired because their salaries were too high.

The newspaper has the idea that when a reader has been lost (s)he is lost forever. There is never a thought of what they can do to get that reader back or increase readership; like publishing more features, or better ones; producing a better, enhanced product. The response instead is to cut costs, eliminate features, which creates a lesser product and drives more readers away in an ever declining death spiral.

Our paper changed the weekly television magazine to a less expensive format and the result was a flood of reader complaints. Nobody liked the new format and no few of the complaints threatened cancellations. The newspaper's response was to drop the television magazine altogether. Needless to say, there were many complaints about that, so they then discontinued weekly television listings on Sundays and now provide daily listings in the daily paper, and only for prime time.

"If you don't like our way, we'll quit doing it." Awesome business model.