Nobody wants CNHI

After Gray Media bought Raycom in 2018, the Retirement System of Alabama remained stuck with CNHI, formerly known by its original full name of Community Newspaper Holdings Inc.

CNHI has long been known as the bottom rung of larger sized newspaper ownership companies. Even as Gatehouse, I mean Craphouse, approaches official merger time with Gannett, even as Alden continues to slash and burn Dead Fucking Media, they still don't fully approach the craptaculartude of CNHI.

CNHI already had a bad reputation before 2009. I saw that 20 years ago in the greater Metroplex area when it ran two daily newspapers, Mineral Wells and Weatherford, with one publisher. No, no. Both papers would need to cooperate on press runs for special sections, etc. But, Mineral Wells needed a separate publisher, not a general manager.

But in 2009, the ground really shifted. In response to the Great Recession, CNHI started requiring one week of furlough every quarter from almost every employee.

And, it saved so much money, even as it drove quality further downhill, that it still continues to do that a full decade later.

The real deal is that, instead of furloughs, CNHI probably needed to file bankruptcy during the Great Recession, like so many other chains. But, given its state pension system ownership, it probably couldn't, for various legal reasons.

Other stupid things continue as well, as I can see from CNHI papers that are near me today.

First? Those Alabama golf course ads that insiders know are really CNHI house ads, as the courses are RSA owned, and make ZERO sense outside of Alabama. (Another sign of the stupidity of CNHI; I'm sure these are required ads, and probably a tax write-off for CNHI's parent as part of it.)

That said, the golf courses make almost zero money for the RSA. That's as golf continues to decline in interest among the under 40 crowd. Second, yes, a resort like WinStar may advertise gaming and concerts in some of your north Texas and southern Oklahoma papers, but their golf course doesn't. Is the Alabama golf ad part of why? Maybe.

Second, doing things like printing TV guide sections. Nobody who subscribes to daily papers, at least, reads those. Cut them and cut your print bills.

Of course, you're stuck with these problems. After Gray Television bought Raycom, RSA said it wanted to sell CNHI's papers, piecemeal if need be. RSA is obviously overvaluing them, cuz I ain't heard of any of them, at least not any great number of them, being sold to anybody.

Part of the overvaluing is probably that many CHNI small dailies need to be cut to triweeklies or something. Not facing that reality is part of why CNHI has them overpriced.

Florida journalists' group slouches toward Gomorrah AND irrelevance

Emily Bloch and other members of the Florida Pro chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists have hatched a true Bizarro World idea: Trademark the words "fake news" so that Trump can't use them.

First, that's not how trademarks work in general. I can say "Coca Cola" any time I want, as long as it's not monetized commercial speech that infringes on a trademark.

Second, political speech (including non-verbal speech) is recognized as having extra rights in things like this. Since Trump IS president, that would give him more protection yet.

Third, contra her claim that it's "uncertain" that the Patent and Trademark Office will grant this, I can say it's almost CERTAIN it will NOT. Google four words: "Taco Tuesday" and "LeBron James."

Fourth, this clearly violates at least the spirit of the First Amendment. Beyond it being hare-brained, it's unethical and unprofessional. It's a sad state of affairs that she roped an entire chapter of the SPJ into this stupidity.

Ms. Bloch, per her bio, has contributed to Teen Vogue, among other things. This sounds about that level of thought. I mean, the story is posted on Teen Vogue. That's something that calls itself a "magazine," isn't it?

Worse yet, at a time when ever more Americans are willing to fold, spindle and mutilate the First Amendment, and especially among youth, giving them this mental swill as intellectual feeding is more unethical yet IMO.

I Tweeted — two delayed via TweetDeck — on three themes:
1. The general nutteryness
2. The LeBron/Taco Tuesday angle
3. The not understanding trademark law.

Florida SPJ responded ... with Bloch liking the Tweet, which doubled down on what's essentially a clickbait angle.

Thanks for weighing in! As we’ve explained multiple times, across multiple platforms: We wanted to start a conversation and share resources about how to be critical about what is and isn’t news. We’re glad to have done so. Learn more at https://t.co/tEtOlGIzPs

— SPJ Florida (@SPJFla) October 24, 2019

To which I fired back:

As many journos have weighed in on #FakeNews 4 mths/years, you cld have done much better IMO. Re yr website, I start w/ MediaBias FactCheck to examine websites with which I'm unfamiliar, then go from there. W/in media, I don't always trust Politifact et al https://t.co/zGb92JBlC8

— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 24, 2019

Beyond clickbait, the one other thing I think of is related to that — it's a membership recruitment tool. I'm sure that at anything below larger-level dailies, individual memberships in groups such as SPJ has continued to drop along with flatlined or dropping salaries.

A programmatic advertising potential nightmare

I'm "awaiting" with something less than baited bated (shame on me for misspelling that like an AP reporter or something) breath the day when CrapHouse launches its own programmatic ad network while simultaneously shit-canning half of their on-the-ground salespeople at various newspapers. (That's assuming I haven't missed something and it already has one.)

Given the latest word on the CrapHouse-Gannett merger, this may not be quite such an unrealistic (as in, won't happen) nightmare.

Slouching toward Gomorrah rival CNHI, since it has no production hub, would be unable to do this. Besides, programmatic advertising is computer based, and you can't furlough a computer for a week every quarter, so CNHI would be confused about what to do with this. CNHI is too stupid and disorganized to pull something like that off anyway.

Sherman-Denison ain't doing so well either

A week or two ago, I blogged about a Thursday issue of the Fort Worth StartleGram that had ZERO on ROP, yes, NO display ads (outside of a house ad).

Well, recently, I saw the front section, at least, of a Tuesday Sherman-Denison Herald-Democrat. I assume that the B had classys as well as sports.

Well, dunno what display ads, besides display classifieds, might have been in that B section. But, there were none in that A section. Oof. And, no AP or other wire; inside was a bunch of "staff report" stuff that wasn't local, and mainly wasn't from any of its Texoma-area feeders, but wasn't Texas Tribune, either. I suspect it was from other dailies owned by GateHouse plus content mill stuff produced at CrapHouse HQ.

FW StartleGram: Slouching toward a JOA with the Snooze?

Every time I look at either one of the Metromess' two larger dailies, I see yet more cratering and yet more wondering about their viability.

The latest comes from the Oct. 3 issue of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

First, it's its normal weekday 20 pages. (Well, Mondays is usually shorter.) On its web press size and length that is approaching Berliner size.

AND AND AND?!?!?!

I've never seen a daily paper run ZERO display ads in an issue.

You read that right.

The StartleGram had a paid adhole of a bit under 15 percent.

It was five-sixth of a page of obits (which I count as paid adhole).

Two pages of classifieds.

And that was it.

No, really.

Again, ZERO ROP.

Now, a metro issue rather than one in the exurbs? Maybe it has a few ads.

But out here in the country? No display ads. At least not paid ones. (There was one quarter-page house ad.)

Wow.

Now, let's flip to the editorial side.

Lead story? From the other side of the Metromess, of course, the sentencing on Amber Guyger.

Photo?

From the Snooze.

Even five years ago, no way the Dallas Morning News is giving the Star Telegram a news photo. They'd started down the road of sports and entertainment coverage collaboration, but no way the Snooze does something like this.

Yes, I know the News' Tom Fox was part of a pool. Still, in the past, if that was sent to the AP, the Snooze would have said "no local media" or some similar restrictions. And, doesn't AP have its own photogs? Answer is yes, of course. Were none of them there? Were none of them allowed? There ARE other photographs. Plus, from the StartleGram's POV, there was the option of asking a TV station, or a network, for a still off video. Today's HD video would give you a fine quality picture for the front.

To me, that's poor optics and poor judgment.

Wow.

And layouts? Almost exactly the same on the front.

There you are, whichever way you slice your comparative viewing of the two papers.

Trying to figure out whether that looks worse (for the StartleGram) as a vertical or a horizontal.

So, JOA time? I mean, you might as well if you're to the point of sharing photos and having a semi-identical layout. And, if you're to the point of the StartleGram and you can't even sell an ad into your paper, you can't be making money, can you?

So, if no JOA, does this mean more layoffs ahead?

==

To give credit to where it's due, nine days later, their late Saturday bulldog had 40 percent ads, and the two Tuesdays since have been above 20 percent total, so more than 1 full page of ROP. Still.