Bully for bulldog in Denton, I thought, but it wasn't; Denton Record Chronicle struggles, touts e-editions

Couple of Saturdays ago, when I was at a Wally in Denton, Texas, I saw a bulldog edition of the Denton Record Chronicle.

Page count was at least 28 pages, if I remember correctly. Adhole was 40 percent or better.

Then, I thought, I'd better check. Maybe it's cut to six days a week, or less.

And it had.

Twice a week in print right now.

Will it bounce back at some point?

It could, but ...

BUT ...

Not just for it, but all newspapers that have whacked print schedules?

The "bounceback" is going to have to be an active initiative. At some point, you're going to have to say, "We're just going to have to add back some of those print days."

Maybe you whack pages. Maybe you whack print run and only circulate locally (as in Denton County, no Cooke County, Wise County or elsewhere) on some of the re-adopted print days.

But, the longer you wait, the less likely you are to pick back up many of your print customers.

If I were the DRC?

The weekender, and a Wednesday with store flyers, would be the biggies.

Monday stays dead. Tuesday, a local edition. Friday a local edition and you push heavy for entertainment ads as movie theaters start reopening, etc.

That said, Poynter says e-editions, long an ugly duckling in the papers world, are the hot new thing, citing places like the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which is bigger than the DRC, and enabling it to do a statewide edition.

OTOH, the idea of making multiple e-editions per day based on things like breaking sports news? At big papers, especially, that can involve extra time. Plus, sports has never carried the freight in terms of display ads. So, IMO, editors and publishers still have a ways to go on e-edition smartness. And, as Poynter notes, it's still an open question as to how much of the freight e-edition ads can carry versus what they do in print, even if it's an e-edition only day.

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Compare this with the Casper Star-Tribune, which I'm guessing has about the same potential circ, that is population reach area, as the DRC, but surely a higher actual circ. It is just now making the decision to contract print days, but it's only dropping from seven to five. 

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Update: Sometime before spring 2022, the DRC went to just weekly in print.

StartleGram, Snooze, continue to have COVID ad struggles

Last Thursday, I saw both papers on the racks in their Red River Valley exurban editions.

And, boy.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, or StartleGram? First, it's been cut from the previous 20 pages down to 16. Hey, that made it 25 percent, or nearly so, on adhole.

As normal, I count obits as part of the adhole. Obits and extended classys with several public notices made up most of that. Display ads were less than three-quarters of a page, or less than 5 percentage points of that adhole.

Over to the Snooze. Normal, or post-COVID normal (can't remember where it was at in February) 30 pages on page count.

ELEVEN percent. The great majority was non-display. Now, it didn't get lucky, unlike the Cowtowners; no big raft of legal notices. But, that was "lucky" in Fort Worth. This is normal.

Still can't believe there are no talks, or rumors of talks, of a full or semi-full JOA.

Jay Rosen's naive, idealistic cororavirus coverage ideas

Rosen may make a great prof, but as I've noted before, he's not in the trenches, and ideas before coming from him have shown that he doesn't fully get the trenches.

Ditto on his five ideas for coronavirus media coverage.

Idea No. 1 would require upsetting editorial as well as corporate mindsets. It would also probably, if done on a big enough scale, require the DOJ suspending antitrust laws during at least the "new normal." Funny that Rosen doesn't consider any of this.

Flip side? Jay, imagine this thing called the "Associated Press." But yet, larger dailies and daily chains want to do their own stories even though, via the AP and some collaboration with it, what you propose already exists.

Idea No. 1, problem 2? Rosen wanting to call in big philanthropic organizations. Seeing the Texas Trib upfront at its 10-year anniversary, Jay, I can tell you that, maybe that will help, but probably not as much as you think, and not without problems itself.

Idea No. 2? It's called data-driven journalism or similar, and it's being done as we speak. Weekly, if not daily, updates on testing, along with cases and fatalities. Really, Jay?

Idea No. 3? This is at best about semi-iffy news analysis. A lot of independent websites have noted we may NEVER fully go back to the old normal. And if we do get there, nobody has a good idea of when.

Idea No. 4? Some teevee outlets have cut away from Trump pressers in medias res. So, this is to some degree happening there. Print folks? As the likes of Lakoff know, never printing a lie in the first place, rather than printing it and doing news analysis, is the best way to refute it.

BUT ... there's this thing called the Interwebz, Jay. If readers of, say, the librul San Francisco Chronicle want to read the blow-by-blow from Trump's latest Rose Garden speech, they'll go to the AP. (Speaking of, insert paywalls observation here.)

Idea No. 5? It would be nice, but where do you get people to do that???? Actually, Muck Rack may do it for you.

Jay Rosen isn't the biggest idiot among Gnu Media gurus. That would be Clay Shirky and Jeff Jarvis tied for first, and the two of them have a big lead on the pomposity.

But Rosen and Mathew Ingram would be leaders of the second tier.

More than a decade ago, Rosen opposed paywalls. Dunno his current stance, but I don't think he's ever admitted he was even partially wrong. (All four of these biggies opposed them, for that matter, and AFAIK, none have fessed up to being even partially wrong.)

Of direct relevance to his Item 1? Also more than a decade ago, Rosen proclaimed the end of media atomization. If it were only true, you wouldn't be writing about Idea 1, amirite?

Nearly a decade ago, CJR took Rosen (and even more, Shirky, Jarvis and a few others) to the cleaners, and over other things besides just opposition to paywalls. This too is directly relevant to the new round of drivel from Rosen.

I quote:

The irony, though, is that in the second decade of the twenty-first century—thanks in no small part to FON thinkers, including, sad to say, Rosen—journalism is now enslaved to a new system of production. Publishing is now possible all the time and in limitless amounts, forever and ever, amen. And, given the market system, and the way the world is, that which is possible has quickly become imperative. Suddenly, the “god” of the old twenty-four-hour news cycle looks like lovely Aphrodite compared to the remorseless Ares that is the web “production routine.” And this new enslavement—trust me here—hurts readers far more even than it does the reporters who must do the blogging, tweeting, podcasting, commenting, and word-cloud formation until all hours of the day and night. This is why, IMHO, journalism is great these days at incremental news, not so good at stepping back and grabbing hold of the narrative. In some circles, this is frowned upon. 

And, of course, since then, the push for video and other things has only made this worse. Lots to apologize for there, Rosen.

One of the biggest? Rosen's idea of network-driven news has been imploded by the biggest "network" for fake news, aka Twitter.

Finally, and also pretty directly relevant? A little over two years ago, in fellating Yascha Mounk, Rosen had a boatload of mistakes, starting with calling an op-ed column a news story. He's right about avoiding the he said-she said model of journalism, but that doesn't mean calling opinion columns news stories.

Speaking of he said-she said, I don't think Rosen has really stepped wider than the two traditional American political parties on that issue. The fellating of Mounk would also support that.

Jack Shafer: Don't have a gummint bailout of newspapers

Know something? He's right.

Why should the government subsidize sports coverage, for example, when sports comes back? Or the funny pages?

Second, how do you write language to keep vulture capitalists from getting any of this? (I disagree with Shafer's quasi-libertarian attitude toward vulture capitalists in general, but that's another story.)

Third, how do you keep the gummint from meddling once it gives you money?

None of these are easily addressed, and given Washington's coronavirus bailout bills so far, none of them will be addressed if such a bill passes.

A lot of this applies more to daily than non-daily papers, and more to corporately than non-corporate ones. But, in a lot of rural counties, a nondaily paper owned either by a "family" publisher or a small chain, may be the only paper there is. If they get bailout money, will they be told not to criticize the local Extension agent? Or not worry about the Soil Conservation Service's old impoundment dam?

And, to go beyond Shafter, there's a reason local papers didn't get more money already, per The Hill. It's the way they're incorporated. Blame the ownership for that. As I've written before, your local newspaper is incorporated in a way your local State Farm office is, namely, so that the ownership reaps the benefits first, but the local staff shoulders the blame first.

A number of years ago, Ben Carden proposed giving all newspapers nonprofit status. But again, how do you keep the vulture capitalists from a big tax writeoff with that?