So, in my previous post I talked about the weirdness and inflexibility of print deadlines at the Gainesville Daily Register.
Here are some other things, both as an individual paper and as a CNHI outlet, I don't get about it.
First thing I don't get is its lack of coverage
on energy issues. Cooke County is in the top 30 percent of the state's
counties in both oil and gas production, and yet, it does basically
nothing in terms of industry news other than an occasional press report
from the Texas Railroad Commission, with those pressers only having
statewide, or on occasion, regional info.
Second is their "wire" coverage.
They
regularly run stuff from the Texas Trib. That's fine. But, they've
occasional run an AP piece. Occasionally as in once every three-four
weeks. Are they paying for an AP account that's not being used? Or is
another CNHI paper breaking AP contract by redistributing? (Wouldn't
surprise me. Still not sure who is cheaper, Can't Need Huge Investment
or Craphouse.) Or are they copying stories off the AP News website?
(Which, it should be noted, does NOT have a "copywrited" note on either
the home page or on individual story pages.) I suppose it is possible
that AP has added an a la carte offering to its system, but I highly
doubt it.
Third is some of their local "advances."
For
the unfamiliar, an "advance" is when a small daily, usually on the
Friday or weekend edition, having gotten an agenda for the school board,
city council, or county commission meeting, summarizes top items of
potential action, should people want to attend, or at least know what to
watch out for.
A while back, on a commissioners court
advance, the header and lede graf was about changing the speed limit on a
couple of county roads.
Really?
The
story didn't even mention what, for residents in unincorporated areas,
IMO was definitely the biggest item — the county possibly enacting a
burn ban. (Commissioners didn't, but, nonetheless, IMO, the potential for that was the bigger item.)
I mean, I'm not perfect, and per any laziness being being issue No. 1, I am a bit slothful at times, too.
But, why?
For
that matter, given that they run NO national advertising other than
that CNHI national ad about that Alabama golf course that must be OWNED
by the Alabama pension system, if not CNHI or Raycom directly, as often
as it runs, why are they a daily? A Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday triweekly
of 12-12-12 on pages would give almost the same number of pages as
currently and cut their third-party press bill and delivery driver bill.
Or,
if you're going to stay a five-day daily? Especially if you're just
charging 50 cents still? Whack it to eight pages. (10 on Fridays in
football, including your two football booster pages.) As part of that,
stop insisting you must have two full pages of classifieds, since in
most cases, after you subtract house ads and massive amounts of black
background space around legals, you only have 1 1/4 pages of
classifieds. From an insider point of view, it looks gimmicky, cheesy
and crappy.
Drop text on top of any classifieds that
spill from the first page. Bigger papers than you do this. Also? Get rid
of the four pages of TV guide on Wednesdays. Nobody reads that any
more, unless they're at the high end even of average newspaper reader
range. (You're allowed to keep them if you get an advertiser to sponsor
them.)
An eight-pager is quicker to produce, has a
smaller print bill and has a smaller mail bill to non-local subscribers
who don't do digital only. No brainer all the way around.
And,
Mineral Wells is the same population, though Palo Pinto County is
smaller than Cooke. And Cee Nothing Hear Infintesimally found enough
brains to make it a semiweekly. (I would have gone triweekly, as I
suggest for Gainesville.)
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