Comments on: Put up or shut up: Newspapers aren't the only forum for great journalism

By: Robert Niles

Robert Niles — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 08:45:14 +0000

Actually, I think that attitude is one of the reasons why circulations’s been declining at so many newspapers.

If you see your news publication merely as a vehicle for delivering an audience to advertisers, you won’t have that audience long. A publication must reflect passion for its topic, and its audience, to attract and retain that audience. It can’t thrive if readers see it as a sterile vehicle in which they’re trucked over to advertisers.

By: David Jensen

David Jensen — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 22:40:02 +0000

This article misses the point. What newspapers sell is audience. Without audience, they cannot command handsome prices for advertising or even make a profit. Moreover, what really counts is household penetration — the percentage of households in the circulation area that subscribe to the paper. The LA Times circulation has been declining, and its penetration drop has undoubtedly been much worse. It is not likely to regain the circulation that supports its business lifestyle, so to speak. This is a problem that afflicts most major metropolitan newspapers that continue to produce content that is out of touch with the readers. Ultimately there may be no real solution to keeping the LA Times alive. But if you want to produce serious print journalism, one possibility is to shrink circulation to a high-demographic profile sought by advertisers, and charge high prices for both advertising and the paper (say $2.00 a day).

By: Jeff Wilson

Jeff Wilson — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 01:28:15 +0000

For me, the Times is the gold standard in print journalism. I devour its paper and online editions. I email some of the journalists and ask them how they find such great sources. I try to model my own feature story writings on their multi-part stories.

The LA Times is about quality, in depth news coverage. Even with a staff of 800, they’ll still produce top quality national and international content.

I just don’t think the Times has wanted to be a local paper in a long time. There’s a certain hubris that exists at the Times. My journalism instructor said that over ten years ago, the Times tried to push the Ventura County Star off its pedestal in Ventura. They didn’t care to devote the necessary resources to Ventura County, and despite the better general news coverage, they failed because they didn’t cover high school sports enough.

In any event, nature abhors a vacuum. My town (Santa Clarita) has two local dailies that cover quite a bit. But they can’t possibly cover everything, nor can they cover stories as in depth as they would like.

So I’ve tried to find that niche and it seems to be working. In the online journalism/blogging world, the signal to noise ratio is very high. It’s all about producing quality content that rises above 99% of online posts on any given topic. Quality writing is what makes the Times great, and it can be replicated online.

I’d love an LA area based internet ad group who understood what I was trying to do with my site.

Good article.