When the ABC released its latest round of circulation figures this spring, it wasn’t pretty for a number of metro dailies across the state. With steep circulation declines comes worry the pool of advertising dollars will be further fragmented by competing media, including broadcast, the Web and free-distribution weeklies, reports Media Life Magazine.
Writes columnist Tom Rosenstiel on poynter.org: The challenge of American journalism today is managing transition. It is not, I believe, supervising decline, though if journalists define it by the second construction, they can ensure that decline will occur.
The Jackson Free Press, an alternative news weekly publishing in the metro, is raising cain about plans by Gannett Co. and The Clarion-Ledger to introduce a distribution network in the market for free publications. The story caught the attention recently of the Mississippi Business Journal, local TV stations and is the subject of an online petition the JFP has posted on its Website.
Only one Knight-Ridder paper remains of the group of 12 McClatchy announced it would sell after the K-R buyout. The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader is still looking for a date.
We love the Calhoun County Journal in Bruce. It’s a great community weekly with interesting copy and quality photos. And it’s latched on to a trend in online newspapering that’s becoming commonplace: Resale of photos and front pages.
A number of third party providers can help with such projects. Many papers, like the CCJ and the Scott County Times in Forest, are using My Capture. Effectively marketed and maintained, the site add-on makes it easy for customers to browse photos — even those not published — and buy reprints or copies online. Buyers remit via secure credit or debit transaction, handled by the vendor, who skims a bit for their share.
Gosh. We may be the only folks not working on a Sudoku puzzle these days. They’re cropping up in a lot of publications and seem to be catching on with many readers.
Well, the Sudoku has landed, on a trial basis, in Brookhaven, along with a number of other changes at the Daily Leader. The paper is in the midst of a redesign and this week introduced the makeover to inside pages.
By the way, if regular crossword puzzles prove a wee bit difficult for you, just wait until you get a load of these Japanese torture grids.
CNHI is converting its newspaper Website over to a company platform that’s quite a step up for most of the community newspapers in the state. The new sites include improved photo reproduction and positioning, and expanded features such as forums and customer interaction pages for letters, subscriptions and classifieds.
Mississippi papers on the new platform are Meridian, Laurel, Picayune, Newton and Kosciusko.
OK. May be the news isn’t that bad after all. The Newspaper Association of America reported last week that overall newspaper ad revenue rose during the first quarter on strength of online ad sales. Hmmm.
In the upcoming issue of The Fourth Estate, MPA president Lloyd Gray references a fascinating article in the December/January 2006 issue of American Journalism Review, calling it a terrific, must read.
From AJR…Far away from the high-pressure, profit-margin-obsessed world of corporate journalism, four Mississippi weeklies provide their readers with first-rate local coverage. Despite their tiny staffs, they manage to find time for investigative reporting. And their hard-hitting editorials often have significant impact on public policy.
Bloomberg News reports ad spending in U.S. newspapers dropped 6.5 percent in the first quarter. The same data, compiled by TNS Media Intelligence, indicates Internet ad spending rose by a whopping 19 percent during the same period.
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Meanwhile, in other depressing national print headlines, some 70 newsroom staffers at The Washington Post, including reporters, editors, and photographers, will take the paper’s buyout offer, the Post reported Thursday. Included in the trimming was longtime TV critic Tom Shales.
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