(05-18-2018 02:41 PM)Monarchblue Wrote: (05-18-2018 01:56 PM)Cyniclone Wrote: (05-18-2018 09:03 AM)jumpshooter Wrote: (05-18-2018 08:43 AM)monarx Wrote: (05-18-2018 08:39 AM)jumpshooter Wrote: ODU coverage is going to take a substantial hit in the next 10 days or so. Fact, not opinion.
? Why is that? The VP cutting reporters again or something?
Yes
Jesus Christ. Where CAN they cut at this point? I know so many reporters and editors and photogs not there anymore, not of their own volition and not for anything they've done wrong. I know the print game is struggling and may be past its event horizon moment, but at some point when do you throw in the towel? I've worked there three times (and gotten laid off all three) so I have a soft spot/codependency thing with them, but I'd rather someone put them out of their misery than have them lurch along this pitifully.
I know this is totally off topic, but it raises an interesting question for me that you may have some insight to. Where is the disconnect. Surely, there is a market for localized news, especially with sports and local politics/investigative. What do these old print companies need to do to be able to continue to provide the local news that people want. Their are web based news services on a national level everywhere that seem to be successful. Is print the albatross that is killing these companies? Is it outdated business practices? Are they too fat? Do they just not understand how to compete in the digital space? It seems every move The Pilot makes around digital is the wrong one. From layout, to monetization, to app accessibility, the entire thing is a mess. I stopped paying for my online subscription because there is not an enjoyable way for me to consume all of their content. There also needs to be an easy way for me to subscribe. If I went to their site, and instead of getting the annoying pop up telling me to subscribe and go through 10 steps to start said subscription, there was an option to subscribe in one click with Google Pay, Amazon, or Apple Pay and then view the news in the Google News or Apple news app, I would not hesitate to pay them $10 a month. As it is, I refuse to pay for the terrible experience they currently provide.
The Pilot has made the same mistakes that pretty much every legacy print product has made in their attempt to transition to an online-first news-gathering organization.
For starters, they moved too late to make online a priority. By the time they did, it was easy (and getting easier by the day) to access information without paying for it separately. Once that happens, well, good luck unringing
that bell. The sad part is (and I can't find the video for it) that the Pilot was among a few newspapers in the 1980s that tested an online news portal concept. So someone knew where this was headed, but doing something with it was easier said than done.
They also, as you point out, made the transition slowly. In fairness, they were in a catch-22 in that print advertising and readership, while dropping steadily, still carried the ball for them. They could have made a better effort to focus on online earlier, but in doing so they would have abandoned a sure thing in exchange for a much-less certain economic future. Online advertising is a tricky buy even for the most established sites; online ads tend to be a lot more obtrusive than their print or TV counterparts and are more likely to be the product of bad actors, which is why we've been creating and improving ad blockers for 20 years now. So they leaned into the sure thing in hopes that the market would stabilize, or that they could at least staunch the bleeding until a manna-from-Heaven solution materialized.
And when they did, it was clumsy. They tried to capitalize on the rise of tablets with Evening Pilot, a weird mix of app-exclusive stories/presentations and access to the normal site. It was a good attempt but readership was way below what was necessary to warrant the money/time/manpower devoted to it, and it died. They tried paywalls, but newspaper paywalls are pretty easy to defeat. It's an industry-wide problem; every attempt to monetize the internet is either ill-conceived or too late to matter.
Timing also accelerated their decline. When the Great Recession hit, newspapers were already losing readers and advertisers. They were hurt both directly and indirectly (car ads used to be a big part of the newspaper advertising portfolio but when you're having your own economic struggles, it's no longer as important). When the economy recovered, advertisers found they could manage their message more cheaply and effectively through direct contact with consumers through their own sites, while classifieds were almost immediately killed by the rise of Craigslist — imagine paying good money on a four-line ad to rent an apartment or sell a used 2010 Camry now?
The parallel I keep coming back to, albeit an imperfect one, is Blockbuster. They were the industry standard for a good long time, but as Redbox and Netflix nibbled at their heels, they didn't move quickly enough. They finally trotted out self-service kiosks well after Redbox established market dominance, and attempts to pivot to DVD-by-mail and streaming services were both ham-handed and hopelessly tardy in the face of Netflix's emerging dominance. They were steadfast in their belief that at the end of the day, people would still choose the tried-and-true of going to the Blockbuster to get a couple of movies and a video game for the weekend instead of depending on those newfangled mail and streaming services. When they realized where this was all going, they tried to correct course, but it's like pulling a U-turn while half your car is already over the cliff.
Newspapers, the Pilot included, are locked in a death spiral, and the worst part is there's no obvious way to save itself that would work. There's no shortage of information and opinion, but the reporting that links them is becoming harder to come by, and fewer people notice or care as they retreat to their ideological ramparts to hear from the sources they trust to tell them what they want to hear. Nobody pays for information anymore, unless they can directly benefit from it (which is why
The Wall Street Journal paywall works where other newspapers' do not). All they can do is cut, cut, cut and depend on a dying audience to keep them alive for a few more paychecks, until they can get to retirement. There's still value in reporting and the brand that many newspapers provide, but translating that into money in this day and age is a puzzle that will consume their last breaths.