Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining when you cut pages

About six weeks ago, I noted here that the Gainesville (non-Daily, change your masthead) Register was smarter than the Denton Record-Chronicle by ditching running daily comics, puzzles, advice columns, etc. for three of the six non-Sunday days each week in its two print editions.

Well, now, on to that headline.

In a house editorial in its June 16 issue, the paper says "we miss the comics, too."

Fine.

Then, we get a line of PR bullshit that I assume is CNHI-wide. (Teh Google confirms.)

They said getting rid of them meant more local news.

Bullshit.

What it means is that it LOOKS like more local news because the same amount of local news is part of a newspaper with two fewer pages.

On the front page of the Register, in the same issue, for example? A groundbreaking for a NEW SIDEWALK, a Gainesville City Council story about ongoing discussion of review of the city charter and possible amendments, and ...

A Texas Tribune story about how the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality was in the process of setting standards for uses of fracking wastewater. Given that there's no fracking done in the moderate amount of oil and gas drilling in the area, that's irrelevant. They had a state Extension Service story about summer foods, on an inside page, that would have been more appropriate up front.

Oh, other than Reader's Choice "vote for us" ads, the normal almost-nothing on local ads. And, most of those were only 2x3. One one-quarter page, a back page of all 2x3 and that was it. 

Yes, CNHI actually does sell newspapers

 I guess that the Retirement System of Alabama has enough asset diversity, and has seen its other assets grow enough, that it can sell individual newspapers at something at least approaching today's market values and let the rest of the chain mark to market on its asset value.

Anyway, last year, per a Google for other reasons, the main reason being to wonder if CNHI was still doing its mandatory quarterly furloughs, last year it sold 10 newspapers to Carpenter Media. These were in its heartland — Alabama, Georgia and one Mississippi.

Carpenter itself is "interesting," per Poynter, which notes its apparent "Chainsaw Al" type operations, which make it currently the sixth-largest US newspaper chain by number of papers. In addition, its acquisition of Black Press, besides US papers, gave it a massive Canadian presence in Alberta and British Columbia. More on that acquisition from the Seattle Times.

Per its own website, their papers include a pair of semiweeklies that I had applied to, as ME, a year ago. They made their acquisition just months after I made the first round of cuts but didn't get the job. Per this longform piece, and per the Times, it's probably good I didn't. 

Once again, not getting the Gainesville Register

 Gainesville, Texas, approximately 17,000, is the county seat of Cooke County, approximately 45,000.

The paper is CHNI. Nuff ced?

Current editorial staff is an in-house staff writer, and a regional editor, with originally a sports background, running three CNHI papers. Weatherford is about 75 miles away, generally southwest. Cleburne is about 45 miles southeast of it. Weatherford has gotten so bad that a weekly halfway between it and Fort Worth started an online-only competitor. Nuff ced?

The only in-depth sports coverage the paper had in the entire 24-25 school year was of the football state championship game for Muenster, at the western edge of the county. Muenster has its own newspaper, let us note!

So far, this year the same, until the last two weeks, when some freelancer has reported on one game each week from two non-Muenster smaller schools.

But, Gainesville is nearly 40 percent of the county's population and you can't get anybody to cover Gainesville high school sports?

OK.

That may also say something about Gainesville sports fandom, I'll admit. 

New editor, fewer pages in Gainesville

 So, at the start of the month, as I had heard would happen, the Register officially named CNHI's Cleburne editor as the editor in Gainesville as well. 

But, she doesn't just run that. She's also the editor at Weatherford.

Which means she probably doesn't do a lot of editing at any of the three. And, very little writing. (That's part of why Aledo's Randy Keck saw an opening to start an online-only alternative to the Weatherford Democrat.) So, in that sense, former Register editor Mike Eads won't be replaced.

And? Those pages? The Tuesday, Aug. 6 issue? Just 8 pages. First time I've seen them do that since dropping from triweekly to semiweekly. Don't know about the weekender after that, but the next Tuesday's issue? Eight again. (Why anybody would steal it at the local library other than for crosswords, I don't know.) They did have 10 on the Aug. 17 weekender, but if they'd not nearly a page and a half of legals, they might have dropped.

Aug. 20 midweek? Eight pages again. Ditto Aug. 27.

Looking ahead? Eads fought his way through football coverage and after that, the Register did nothing with sports, other than submitted letter of intent signings, the rest of the 2023-24 school year. Nobody responded to their ad seeking stringers. And, they've yet to start running one this year. That means no sports, in all likelihood.

But, it DOES have (checks notes) an eight-page! football preview. I didn't look in detail. Just saw it had an eight-page preview. Probably almost no ads. That said, in years past, Bill Patterson's Denton Wrecked-Chronic has only had a 12-page preview.

Update, Sept. 18: And, it's being VERY inconsistent in print in sports coverage. And, weirdly so. See more below on the Sept. 17 issue.

Sept. 3 midweek: Bare football scores with presumably submitted photos. 10 pages, in part due to tax rate legal notices.

Sept. 10 midweek: One-paragraph summaries of the Max Preps kind with submitted photos.

Sept. 17 midweek: NO scores, let alone story, even though it was Gainesville's homecoming. NO photos to go with. At least it was all local news on the front page, as the homecoming stuff meant no Texas Trib. But, it was just eight pages. Seriously. They ran a four-column photo, run vertically down to the shoes, of the king and queen, that basically ate up all of the front page on those columns, then a story about the alumni being honored and something about county Democrats to fill out the other two.

But, NO score from the game, let alone other area games.

Also, nothing online or in print about the demolition of an overpass crossing I-35 and how that might affect traffic.

Gainesville Register trying to kill print subscribers?

 That's the only thing I can think of for their latest stupidity, which came from at least the regional level of CNHI, if not headquarters.

The semiweekly paper — which doesn't even have the largest Texas Press Association circulation numbers of a TPA member newspaper in its own county — raised its newsstand price to $1.50 for midweek and $2.00 for weekend, from previous of $1.25/$1.75.

Those are prices for a 10-page newspaper with no sports other than signing days and one other story, since the end of football season; 10-page newspaper WITH one of those full-page CNHI HQ infographic pages every issue; AND with what all CNHI papers — and some other idjits like the Denton Record Chronicle also continue to do — and with a full three pages of black/white comics, and other comics section material each issue. (On this last item, I assume it's part of CNHI still trying to "puff" or "fluff" its papers in hopes some sucker believes them that they're worth their 1990 values. With Bill Patterson in Denton, since the KERA takeover is already in progress, I have no idea what's in his mind doing six days of that for a print weekly.)

Then, there's pure stupidity on the editorial side.

OK, April 30 issue? Gainesville is known beyond the local area for the Medal of Honor parade and events. Paper runs a couple photos up front, then a HALF page photo page on the back page. Was there a paid color ad on the bottom half? Nooooo .... there wasn't a PAID at at all. Rather, CNHI's "Golf in Bammy" half page ad runs — in BLACK AND WHITE.

And, all this with the presumed luxury of a pagination hub.

Anyway, comp papers in this region to the Register?

Bowie News and Wise County Messenger both have 1.5-2x as many pages each issue, as semiweeklies, than Gainesville. Both have full local sports coverage. Both have 3x the amount of local news coverage, if not more. Both still priced at $1 both issues.

That's why I laughed when TPA asked regional publisher Lisa Chappell to be one of the featured speakers at last year's convention. What insights did she have to offer?

Small newspapers not getting it on magazine inserts

 As Louis DeJoy kills the joy in newspaper Mudville with the ever-continuing rate hikes (mixed with the ever-continuing kowtowing to Amazon), newspapers that deliver by mail (which includes some small five-day dailies these days as well as non-dailies) need to be rethinking their bromance with magazine inserts.

NOT tabs on newsprint.

Magazines on the gloss.

First, with newsprint cost issues, magazine stock, even cheaper, is on the rise.

Second, and to the point of this post, magazine stock, even the flimsier stuff, definitely weighs more than newsprint.

Those of us editors with some advertising experience, or GMs or small-town publishers, already know there's an issue as to whether or not magazine ads primarily poach from newspaper ads, anyway.

But, those quarterly neighborhood magazines often more than double the cost of the newspaper into which they're inserted.

And, are the ads paying for that?

Take my beloved nearest CNHI paper.

Its "holidays" quarterly issue of a month ago was 32 pages and just over 25 percent adhole.  Not sure how much net profit that returned.

And, the editorial side, the printing turnaround time was slow enough that a "coming" event mentioned in a feature interview had already happened.

Moahr puzzles at CHNI!

Or, at least, at my local CNHI installment.

Wonder why?

Were people bitching about the amount of Texas Trib content? Bitching about seeing three days worth of comics at one time because it hasn't gotten a clue about not doing that and overvaluing its fishwrap at $1.25 Tuesday and $1.75 Saturday, higher than places like Bowie and Decatur which still have more than fishwrap?

Were they bitching about all those Alabama ads (without knowing why they're there)?

In any case, moahr puzzles, as teased on the banner of the Dec. 9 issue, is "the answer."

And, having seen the first new installment, it's apparently to keep from running more and more of those CHNI corporate-wide prebuilt pages, though the Dec. 12 Register still has one of those, plus this new full page of puzzles for four pages of puzzles or puzzles/comics. Add in it still having one of those other prebuilt pages, and that's five pages of birdcage filler on a 10-pager. 

Update, May 7: The prices are now $1.50/$2.00. And, the Tuesday puzzle may be hit and miss. The current Tuesday issue had two of the prebuilt infographic pages.

NOT the answer? Nobody biting on the "get paid to write sports for us" ongoing house ad ZERO basketball coverage during the non-district season (and who knows after that)? Going on five weeks since the start of hoops at the 4A level and nope, still nothing.

With an editor AND a staff writer (and, AFAIK, pages built at a pagination hub), they could do better.

Back to the header, though. What they need is FEWER puzzles, as well as more editorial content. And, of course, more ads.

As for CNHI in general? I remember when the Snooze touted "moahr puzzles" as "the answer four-plus years ago. Shock me that CNHI is that far behind the curve.

CNHI clickbait

 It's interesting how articles from one CNHI paper appear on another's website even if they have no real relevance there.

For instance, Gainesville ISD, in Gainesville, Texas, looking for substitute teachers? Nice. I'm sure that readers in Cleburne, Texas, 100 miles away, and 100 miles of driving across the Fort Worth half of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, have no real interest. 

Yet, the story is on the website of Cleburne's paper as well as Gainesville's.

I guess it's an attempt to goose online pageviews. 

It probably won't be that successful of one. And, it sounds typical of CNHI.

Which is worse on single-copy prices?

 Is it CNHI (which currently stands for nothing, or Can't Nothing Help It, or Completely Nugatory Hollowed-out Investment, per its RSA ownership) charging $1.75 for a 14-page weekend edition of the Gainesville Register, one-third of which is syndication material, or it it ...

Cherry (Pit) Road Media, charging $2 for a 12-page midweek (Tuesday, and how long before it becomes nothing more than a semiweekly in print) Sherman Dumpacrap that's less than 15 percent ads?

For context in North Texas, Wise County Messenger and Bowie News, both semiweekly, charge $1 for both issues, and versus Gainesville, the weekender is usually at least 16 pages, basic amounts of syndication materials and one-third ads.

A nothingburger grad section in Mudville?

Er, Gainesville. Six pages broadsheet, 1 3/4 pages of ads, or a bit under 30 percent. Out in the country, on a slightly down year for us, we were still at about 35 percent on 10 pages, and without Gainesville ISD and Gainesville-based (for the most part) ads.

But wait, it gets better.

There was a note on the front page, saying this was supposed to have run in the previous Tuesday's issue (that probably was a day late cuz Memorial Day), an issue that, for whatever reason, I've not yet seen.

So, it was a reprint that went in their June 3-4 weekender.

But? Its date on the folios? May 27. Oops ... guess CNHI's version of Craphouse's pagination hubs screwed that pooch. (I've done that once or twice, but I'm not part of a corporate chain that, despite all the budget cuts, is supposed to be paying for more eyeballs.)

And, wait, that's not all.

A note on the June 3-4 weekender notes production problems, which is why it was reinserted there. And, apparently part of that was not printing one school's graduates. That was 2/3 of a page. But, you can't have partial pages.

So, in reality, that special section was supposed to be 7 pages.

But, of course, as we who came up in the print era of publishing know, you can't have odd numbers of pages.

So, actually, even with the biggest high school in the county, they had an 8-page special with less than 2 full pages of ads, or about 22-23 percent.

Did that get talked about at TPA?

Yeah, should be a good time at the TPA convention

Lemme see, keynote speakers include, in a publishers' Q&A roundtable:

Lisa Chappell, a CNHI publisher. Really? Representative of a chain as bad as hedge-fund ones, but not even having that excuse, to riff on a New Republic piece from two years ago. What is she going to talk about? "How to commit the appearance if not the actuality of pension fraud"?

Bill Patterson of the Denton Wrecked Chronic. Is he going to talk on the topic of: "Find the NPR station in your town"? Or maybe elaborate, on dead trees being killed for useless print filler, on how his paper is like a CNHI one?

Leonard Woolsey of the Galveston News. His topic might be: "How to sic a reporter on another reporter i the name of PR, not facts."

And, among the sponsors? The Column organization that is allegedly helping TPA member papers by ultimately helping itself.

NO way to run a railroad or print a newspaper

 The "this is no way to run a railroad" comes from an old-school executive editor at a newspaper group I was at many moons ago. Unfortunately, he never told that to his boss, the owner and publisher of the group, who should have known better himself, but I digress.

The second half of the saying is courtesy my favorite area CNHI whipping boy.

It had a special section Tuesday for its Medal of Honor weekend.

And, were I about one-third of the advertisers in the section, I'd want my money back.

Either a bunch of ads were PDFed in low resolution, or, if the page-building work was some combination of local and CNHI's nearest printing press in Palestine, stuff wasn't embedded.

In either case, some serious pixelation/bitmapping. You know, the typical stuff, like fonts with jagged straight-line edges, that look pretty bad at 36 point or bigger.

If it were two ads instead of one, understandable. Three, even, halfway understandable.

But, I counted one FULL page ad (color, too), four half-pagers and one quarter-pager that definitely were bad and would have been noticeable to a journalist layperson reader. Some smaller ads were iffy, but probably not noticeable to others. My guess? If this was laid out remotely, it was from last year's similar special section, with unembedded ads.

Getting a shift in semiweekly press days wrong, or half-assed

 I understand if you're a semiweekly and your pub days have to be Tuesday and Friday because that's when the press can fit you in, and bigger semiweeklies, or a daily or two, whether from your own ownership group or elsewhere, have first call.

Wednesday and Saturday are preferred, of course.

So, why would your parent company shift your Friday paper to Saturday, for getting Friday sports in the paper, although I think this still only gives them a Friday daytime press deadline, but not also adjust your Tuesday?

Who knows, with my favorite bad but not owned by a hedge fund chain.

Of course, other factors involved include press deadlines and more.

The 2022 year in review

 Here's the top 10 posts from the last year, by readership, as not all were from last year.

1. An insider in Decatur. I don't know why this took off so much, but it did, even though it's only six weeks old. And, it took off in the first week. Dunno if it was "Decatur" being mentioned by name, or TPA, or what.

2. Lee Zion says "have my paper." This is my skeptical take on the owner-publisher of a weekly paper in Minnesota who decided he had to go fight for Ukraine. It's skeptical about why he thought he had to fight, his claims to 100-hour work weeks, and other things.

Related was No. 9: "So Lee Zion got somebody to take his paper off his hands." Sadly, the big names in the world of media criticism have never looked at this issue.

3. "More fun with the Gainesville Register." Just one of several looks at a nearby CNHI newspaper, as was No. 6, "Another CNHI fail in Gainesville."

4. "US media misinformation about Russia-Ukraine media censorship." This was my callout of folks like the Texas Freedom of Information Foundation for, during Sunshine Week, attacking ONLY Russia and NOT Ukraine as well for media censorship. I don't know whether the problem was more misinformation out of ignorance, willfull party-line warmongering or what, but it was bad.

5. "Take a pass on Wick Communications." Four years old, but, probably just as relevant today about a small chain running itself on the cheap.

7. "A new newspaper player in Texas," used the word "newspaper" loosely, as I looked at the dreck Cherry Road Media puts out and speculated about ulterior and ultimate motives.

8. "Don't apply at Hearst" looked at the shithole that the Beaumont paper has become as well as the jump-through-hoops bullshit of the hiring process.

10. "KERA to buy dead carcass of  Denton Record Chronicle." I hope the public radio station can pull off the revitalization, but I'm not holding my breath. That said, by being part of an NPR and PBS team, the paper's lagging financials can be swept under the rug for a while if they don't show much improvement. (And I doubt they will.)

Another CNHI fail in Gainesville

On Tuesday, the Gainesville (Tex-ass) Register ran an op-ed column by Jim Zachary, editor of The Valdosta Daily Times and also CNHI's director of newsroom training.

End of the first column of the print version, we have:

How many children and their parents can't hardly wait until the honor rolls are published so they can cut the page out of the paper and paste it into a scrapbook?

True today?

No. School districts have websites and Facebook pages and parents can print them out or do screengrabs on their smartphones or whatever.

Sad but true.

But, that's not the big fail.

The big fail is that I don't think I've seen a Gainesville ISD honor roll in the Register in 3 and 1/2 years.

Bet Jim Zachary's Valdosta Times doesn't have them either.

Then there's this:

Speaking of advertisements, which stores have sales promotions? Where can you get the best deals? Check out the ads in the paper.

Erm, Jim, the Register runs the CNHI/RSA semi-house ads for golfing in Bama more than it does any single local ad.

Mineral Wells: Another CNHI paper shuts, leaves news desert

 The Mineral Wells Index, in Palo Pinto County, Texas, closed as of the first of the year. It had cut to semiweekly either at the start of, or maybe before the start of, the pandemic. I remember it 20 years ago as a five-day daily.

Even then, CNHI was cheap. No separate publisher for it; it shared one with six-day daily Weatherford, the Democrat, 20 miles east.

Even then, CNHI was also dumb, lazy or both. At the tail end of the old century, as the Fort Worth StartleGram pulled in its horns from circulating west of Abilene (and the Dallas Morning Snooze filled a gap by going all the way out to New Mexico), I thought CNHI had a more localized opportunity to fill in a gap.

Do a Sunday paper for Weatherford-Mineral Wells combined, and treat the Weatherford Saturday paper as a "bulldog" for it. Ditto on the weekend Mineral Wells paper.

With Weatherford College in Weatherford, you could run local sports news in that Sunday edition, for example. And, if CNHI had thought to do its Texas regional reporters, or even borrowing a page from USA Today and Gannett way back then, a weekly "roundup" of stuff. 

But, it didn't.

And, CNHI won't sell papers at market cost today.

Instead, even as the Retirement System of Alabama claims it wants to sell CNHI, and CNHI claims it wants to sell individual papers, it "can't," not at market value. Nor can the RSA cell CNHI at market value.

This would cave the entire value of its pension system, assuming that its value, in terms of the percentage that's invested in CNHI, is based on some stated value written by the RSA 20 years ago. In short, if not actual pension fraud, there's something like the spirit of it going on.

As for Mineral Wells? The old Palo Pinto paper in the county seat closed some time ago, so a county of 25,000 is officially a news desert. Given the degree that CNHI has staff whacks and its quarterly furloughs, no way Weatherford is filling all the vacancy out of its coverage.

No idea if Jim Moser has toyed with expanding Jacksboro's coverage into Mineral Wells or not. All he has to do is print weekly, and grab the Mineral Wells, Mineral Wells ISD, and Palo Pinto County legals away from the Democrat.

Theoretically, you'd get the Mineral Wells Chamber to help on a subscription drive and get, say, 500 people to precommit.

Weekly paper, 10-12 pages, or if you get the ads, eventually, semiweekly at 8 pages per? You can make a profit on that. Run a joint biz card directory with your other papers in that area, Moser.

Gainesville Register goes semi-weekly, still makes CNHI and local mistakes

 I've written about the Register more than once. I've written about The New Republic writing about its parent, CNHI. Last summer, accepting the inevitable, the five-day daily converted to triweekly.

And, the start of this year, it went to semiweekly.

The CNHI mistakes continue.

The biggie is continuing to run a print TV guide section that eats of four pages of ads-free print. 

WHY?

It can NOT be comprehensive, given the plethora of cable channels. 

Plus, it doesn't include streaming from folks like Netflix.

It's simply stupid.

Also stupid and also presumably at CNHI orders?

Running two-three days of comics in a semiweekly's pages. (It includes not just comics, but the full normal syndication — advice column, crossword, etc. Three full pages of ad-free space.)

The ONLY reason that should be done is if either individual CNHI papers, downsized, or CNHI corporate, with a corporate package, is stuck in a daily comics syndication package it can't escape.

So, right there, the Tuesday, Jan. 12 paper has at least four if not six pages of ads-free print that is being wasted. Let's be UN-charitable, because this is CNHI, and assume six.

That's in a 14-page paper that has 1/2 page of display ROP ads, 3/4 page of classified and about a page of paid obits. With obits, that's an adhole of about 16 percent. NOT counting them, that's a 10 percent adhole in a 14-page paper, if that.

Slash that to eight pages, and counting obits, you're approaching 30 percent.

===

OK, on the Register side? I'm not counting running out-of-date weather news, but am going to mention something else.

They cut their width by another half inch or more, it seems, when they went semiweekly. But? It looks like they're still printing on the same web width. 

AND?

They're printing the PDFs' registration marks, and on all pages. I shit you not. If you can't get your printing press to adjust its web, why have you narrowed the pages?

Good New Republic piece on CNHI

The mag notes that vulture capitalists like Alden may be worse than pension funds, but that pension funds themselves, notably the Retirement Systems of Alabama, are bad enough. Here's the details, but, it missed several points.

Basically, Rachel Cohen missed some of the problems specific to CNHI — AND, how long it's run amok like this.

First, like some other chains, it prolly should have declared bankruptcy and done a "rinse" several yrs ago, but as owned by a state pension system, it CAN'T.

Second, being owned by a state pension system leads CNHI to lock in overvaluation of its assets in its newspapers. Because, if it sells one for market value, what's that due to the valuation of all others, and hence, to pension funding? Tanks it, of course. So, while you'll see CNHI close or consolidate papers, that's why you'll almost never see them sell them. Nobody will pay their asking price.

Third, and ergo, so, instead of either a "rinse" bankruptcy, or sale of member papers (OR the company as a whole!!!) #CNHI continues to use the quarterly furloughs it started in the Great Recession. Really, it's an El Cheapo version of what Advance is doing.

CNHI is arguably WORSE than Craphouse or Dead Fucking Media. (See, I know their names.) That's because it's been doing this for more than 20 years. And I have direct experience. My first paper was a 5-day daily. CNHI bopught it 1 year after I left. 20-plus years ago. It made it a semiweekly, which, to be honest, was probably the right thing..

BUT! It refused to adjust subscriptions. Not even at the equivalent of 50 cents on a dollar (as in extending six months left on a subscription to 9 months, not a full year, even at the claims that they were printing more pages) let alone fully. So many people cancelled subscriptions they closed it within a year after buying. 

If you see a CNHI paper in a place like Texas running ads for Alabama golf courses and wonder why? If they're Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail courses, that's because its parent, RSA, owns them. Running stuff about Mobile tourism? Owns one semi-luxury hotel there, as well as, I believe, at least one of the golf courses being there. So, the golf course ads? House ads. The Visit Mobile ads? Semi-house ads, and don't forget that there is a state tourism board with a vested interest in promoting tourism, which has state employees hoping for pensions. (To be precise, per this PDF of the Golf Trail, they own two courses in the greater Mobile area, of 36 and 54 holes, and four hotels of various amenities levels.)

Meanwhile, RSA said three years ago it was going to sell CNHI. Still hasn't. Nobody will pay its inflated price. 

Question? At some point, does this involve pension system fraud or something?

Gainesville paper gives state Rep. free campaign ads

 I'm speaking, as in the past, about the Gainesville, Texas, paper.

State Rep. Drew Springer was just re-elected, and as is tradition in a banana republic state with a legislature that meets just every other year, Drew, along with other Legiscritters, filed a bunch of bills on the first day of filing, a week after the election.

The Gainesville (formerly daily) Register saw fit to put that on the front page.

At a weekly, in a smaller community, I MIGHT have put that BELOW THE FOLD on the front page. 

In a normal election year.

I NEVER would have stripped that across the top on all six columns as the lead story.

Not in a normal year and certainly not this year.

This year being different as in Springer is in a runoff special election for a state senate seat. And, just about every one of the bills he filed was a pander against claims by his opponent, Shelley Luther, that he's not a "real conservative."

In short, the Register gave him a shitload of free advertising.

Not getting the Gainesville Daily Register, part 2

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.)