Years and years ago, when on vacations, I would look at newspapers for design ideas — fonts, headers, layout, etc.
Today? I look to see how small of a web the paper is on, how few of pages it has, and how small of an adhole it has.
And, boy, oh boy.
First, the Farmington Daily Times, since my brother lives there.
City is 45K. County is 115K. Paper is a seven-day, and the only daily in town.
Just 16 pages on a Saturday, and no high school football. People are told to see the website.
Early press deadlines? But why? Did they sell their press and now they print in Durango? Weird. Crappy.
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Grants is about 10,000 people. An hour east of where I grew up.
The Grants Daily Beacon apparently became non-daily a number of years ago, then became the Cibola Beacon, whether as weekly, semi-weekly or tri-weekly, I don't know, then closed at least two years ago. The non-daily Cibola Citizen replaced it.
Weirdly, the Albuquerque Journal made no move to be more aggressive with its Grants coverage.
But the Gallup Independent did. A Mickey D's in Grants had rack boxes for it alone with the Citizen, but no journal. I didn't go inside any C-store to look at either paper.
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And, the Albuquerque Journal.
A 24-page Monday isn't bad, right? Especially if almost 25 percent ads.
BUT ...
Of those?
More than half were classified. And without reading through each one, more than half of those had liners that said "non-governmental legal." WTF? A special on divorces, wills and pay no bills ads? Clear all those out, and get rid of two pages, and you're at 22 pages, but below 20 percent. Still better than the Fort Worth Startle-Gram, which doesn't say a lot.
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