Detroit Free Press and News redirect staff, resources to digital delivery of news

[Faygo Kid]

Source: Detroit Free Press

The Detroit Free Press announced today a first-of-its-kind plan in the struggling U.S. newspaper industry — emphasizing more online delivery of news and information and cutting back home delivery days.

Detroit Media Partnership CEO Dave Hunke, publisher of the Free Press, said that starting in spring 2009, both the Free Press and the Detroit News — also operated by the partnership — would deliver to homes only on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, the heaviest days for advertising and the most popular papers for readers. But the newspapers will remain available seven days a week at stores, newsstands and coin boxes across Michigan.

Hunke said the moves would allow both papers to maintain their news-gathering forces, shift resources to their Web sites, develop new ways to deliver information digitally, enhance multimedia offerings — and, for the foreseeable future, keep Detroit one of the nation’s few remaining two-newspaper towns. . .

. . . “There is a day of reckoning coming for newspapers, which in my mind don’t change and change rapidly,” Hunke said in an interview before today's announcement. “That is a way of life that is going to disappear (for some newspapers) as early as this coming year.”

Read more: http://www.freep.com/article/20081216/FREEPRESS/81216032

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A new world in journalism is coming.

This is the start of an avalanche.

[roseBudd]

1. Why liberals should care about newspapers....

Because while newspapers are on the brink of failing because of the internet, talk radio shows no signs of revenue decline.

Whether you realize it or not, the news whether you read it here as 4 paragraph fair use or on some other site that did not originate the content, that content was created by a newsroom.

Newspapers for better or worse have fact checking standards and fight for government transparency.

I urge DUers to click through to the originator of the news articles you read on Du and elsewhere and give them your page views.

[Tyler Generation]

2. We just need better stanards for the web

Online news will continue to get better in quality as time passes. It's a lot more realistic than expecting people to convert back to an outdated format.

Plus it saves a lot of paper and fuel.

[roseBudd]

6. Where exactly do you think the reporters who write "online news" are? In a basement

working for free?

There is an awful lot of parasitism of the news going on online.

Democracy will not be better off if newspapers become economically unviable.

And when people think they owe not even the courtesy of a page view to the entity who invested time, payroll & infrastructure (including online infrastructure such as servers)so that they can be aware of what is going on in the world is disturbing.

Liberals most of all should understand how dangerous this is.

Your newspaper may have endorsed McCain, it may have endorsed Bush, but it is because of your newspapers newsroom that you know what is happening in your community.

Radio is not at the same risk because their infrastructure costs are different.

[Career Prole]

4. Thank you very much!

Sincerely,
Me...a guy who repairs the presses at a newspaper for his family's daily bread. :hug:

[melm00se]

8. you sure about that?

talk radio shows no signs of revenue decline.

Clear Channel, Limbaugh's network, saw their Q3 revenue down 4%, following a 6% drop in Q2
Citadel (Hannity and Imus) down 11%
Cox (Neal Boortz) down 6.2%

[roseBudd]

11. I stand corrected, everyone is seeing revenue decline due to the

economy however I don't hear anyone saying that they are laying off reporters at Talk radio stations, because technically they have none.

Nor do they have fact checking standards.

[sarcasmo]

3. This is a dupe, TomClash had posted this about 10 hours earlier.

[FreeJG]

5. Well at least now the media will have to speak of Internet news

in a much more respectable way. Bloggers are still crazy people to them, but then the MSM has Huffington and other bloggers on. If they are not credible sources when they don't like the "leaks" in the news, then how come they are credible when they go on one of their TV shows???

:shrug:

[roseBudd]

7. Bloggers simply use the product the newsrooms have invested in, in that sense they are parasites.

[No Elephants]

9. In Boston, we are seeing neighborhood newspapers. They are supported by advertising and free.

[roseBudd]

10. If you think free newspapers are going to hire lawyers to force gov't to

uphold Sunshine laws you are sadly mistaken.

Newspapers lawyers force government to be transparent.

Without the resources of a newspaper we would not know that Warren County Ohio tabulated the votes on Nov. 4, 2004 in secret.

The Associated Press is also funded by

Newspapers!

[No Elephants]

12. Um, I'm not suggesting the demise of newspapers that charge, merely noting what I am seeing now.

[roseBudd]

13. And I am simply pointing out liberals should be very concerned about what is happening

because the disruptors (Craig's List, Ebay) and also the entities like DU & Commonn Dreams who are disseminating the news produced by newspapers depriving the newspaper's websites of those pageviews are part of the problem.

I agree the dead tree vesion will never be what is was, but the online revenue is not making up for the lst revenue of the core product which is print.

Any parasitic use of the newspaper's product (content) is part of the problem.