Disappearing Newspapers

I’ve been a Post-Dispatch subscriber since 1971.  I’ve known many Post reporters and editors.  I’ve never concerned myself with the cost of home delivery - that is, until recently when Wendi noticed a postcard stating that our cost would rise to $240 for every eight-week period.  Given the shrinking size of the paper, which has deadlines so early that often sports stories are a day late, most regional and national stories are from wire services, so it’s getting harder to justify the cost even though I feel some loyalty.

 Then, yesterday, there was a story that the owner is laying off even more newsroom employees.  I frankly don’t know how the Post-Dispatch can exist with so few.  I have a friend who attended a recent Post alumni party, and I’m sure there were more attendees than current employees.  At one time the Post had a seven-member Washington bureau headed by the legendary Richard Dudman.  Now it has no one in DC.

The problem is beyond the publisher’s control.  The Internet eliminated a gigantic source of advertising; one used to see houses and cars for sale in the classified ads.  And there were other hits.

I know a little about the distribution business because a friend and I ran a newspaper during the newspaper strike. We had many Post and Globe employees working for us.  The operation wasn’t that complicated, but what surprised me was the distribution channel.  There were “branch men” and others whose job was to fill the racks at stores or deliver to the route men who delivered to homes.  The routes were valuable assets worth several hundred thousand dollars.  About ten years ago the Post replaced the businesspeople who delivered the papers with contract drivers.

The writing is on the wall (or the newsprint) for the daily print media.  I am surprised that the clever people who own these papers haven’t come up with my idea:

That is, to take national papers like the NYTimes or Wall Street Journal and have a local section so that when I subscribe to the Times, for example, the Post section would have only local news and local sports, with only local ads.  What am I missing?