Damn, No More Bird Cage Liner Paper

[Preacher Franklin]

Alabama Media Group will shift to all-digital delivery, ending publication in 2023 of its four newspapers in Alabama and Mississippi.

The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times and Mobile Press-Register and Mississippi Press will be published through Sunday, February 26, 2023. Subscribers will continue to receive The Lede, a 7-day-a-week e-edition that reports on each city.

 

[Grover777]

I have never paid for online digital news in my life and never will

ridiculous

 

[Preacher Franklin]

I have never paid for online digital news in my life and never will

ridiculous

Totally agree.

 

[The Peeper]

Totally agree.

And I think therein lies the problem for newspapers today. Had they started charging from day 1 back in the early 90's when the interweb first started getting popular they could have and could still be charging I think. But, they fed us for free all those years and decided a few years ago that it wasn't a sustainable model and you two like me said nope, not when I've been getting it for free all this time. Now they try to charge you damn near the same price for digital as they do for delivery and that just doesn't compute w/ most people. No presses, no huge truckloads of newsprint, no delivery people, no big warehouses, no big office buildings, yet they want to charge the same thing.
I always liked the Atlanta Journal paper, I have relatives over there and when visiting I would read that big arse paper cover to cover on a Sunday. I have never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer but I remember well the first time I went to their website and read that thing cover to cover online and said to myself, there's no way to make this work for free. The decision, subscribe and pay for it and let the saved articles rot in a drawer somewhere, or read it online for free and move on. If you need to refer back, do a search. The model just doesn't and never will work now

 

[msstatelp1]

Not the one I was hoping to see

 

[Ranchdawg]

I have never paid for online digital news in my life and never will

ridiculous

Why should we? They get advertisers that flood you with crap so why pay them when they are already making money???

 

[Xenomorph]

Dearest, Clarion-Ledger...

 

[RocketDawg]

And I think therein lies the problem for newspapers today. Had they started charging from day 1 back in the early 90's when the interweb first started getting popular they could have and could still be charging I think. But, they fed us for free all those years and decided a few years ago that it wasn't a sustainable model and you two like me said nope, not when I've been getting it for free all this time. Now they try to charge you damn near the same price for digital as they do for delivery and that just doesn't compute w/ most people. No presses, no huge truckloads of newsprint, no delivery people, no big warehouses, no big office buildings, yet they want to charge the same thing.
I always liked the Atlanta Journal paper, I have relatives over there and when visiting I would read that big arse paper cover to cover on a Sunday. I have never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer but I remember well the first time I went to their website and read that thing cover to cover online and said to myself, there's no way to make this work for free. The decision, subscribe and pay for it and let the saved articles rot in a drawer somewhere, or read it online for free and move on. If you need to refer back, do a search. The model just doesn't and never will work now

I seem to remember that CNN tried charging some years ago, perhaps just for videos. It didn't work so they went with saturating advertising instead.

 

[dogmatic001]

I have never paid for online digital news in my life and never will

ridiculous

Why would you pay for a print subscription but not an online delivery of the same?

 

[DAWGSANDSAINTS]

Sad day in the newspaper business.
I read a Sunday edition of a local newspaper this past Sunday for the first time in maybe 2-3 years.
It was not much more content than what they used to have on a Tuesday edition of same newspaper.
I got on a plane about a week ago on a Friday morning and someone actually had a newspaper in there face.
Use to be 75% of the plane would have had a newspaper in their hand on a airplane.

 

[mstateglfr]

Why should we? They get advertisers that flood you with crap so why pay them when they are already making money???

Are they making money? Papers across the country have been gutted and local reporting has suffered the most. This hurts communities as local papers have historically done the work to uncover corruption/scandals and less pulling back the curtain is worse for everyone.

This shouldnt be a political issue, even though some want to make it one. Both sides should want more local oversight and investigation.

The only way for people to investigate and report on local issues is if there is money.

 

[Grover777]

Why would you pay for a print subscription but not an online delivery of the same?

I’m better informed than almost anyone in the western hemisphere and I don’t subscribe to paper or digital news. Once toilet paper shortages return after the midterms I might subscribe to paper news , it will probably be cheaper

 

[Wesson Bulldog]

Sad day in the newspaper business.
I read a Sunday edition of a local newspaper this past Sunday for the first time in maybe 2-3 years.
It was not much more content than what they used to have on a Tuesday edition of same newspaper.
I got on a plane about a week ago on a Friday morning and someone actually had a newspaper in there face.
Use to be 75% of the plane would have had a newspaper in their hand on a airplane.

I ran our local paper, the Copiah County Courier, for 23 years until I finally had to make a career change in 2018. I saw some of the best of times in the weekly newspaper business when internet was still new and we had a fighting chance. We were printing money because no one really knew how to utilize the web, yet. Not many of us grasped the opportunity that the internet presented, nor did we band together to prepare and plan for the new world in time. Before we knew it Facebook was taking readers and advertisers with 'free advertising', smart phones put instant customized news in everyone's hand and people just plain stopped giving a crap about local news. Weekly papers like ours printed old news once a week.
Readers died off, major grocery insert advertisers left for apps shifting our revenue to digital and car dealers cut us out.
It was a slow and predictable death. I served on the board of the MS press association for 6 years witnessing the old guard retire, sell out or die off, leaving skeleton crews behind to run the papers. Then, local presses began consolidating or shutting down altogether leaving huge holes in communities. I hate it because I grew up reading the CL and JDN every single day, especially during football season.

 

[garddog]

Most of the local small town papers were too stubborn to combine 20 years ago. Then they started lying to advertisers saying their paper's "reached" xxxxx people, when they were only printing maybe 2000 papers. It was the biggest flim flam I had ever seen, I finally told all of the paper owners in my area, that when one of them bought the rest out and I could reach my whole market I would buy ads again. They are all still fighting each other and going down in flames.

 

[Wesson Bulldog]

Most of the local small town papers were too stubborn to combine 20 years ago. Then they started lying to advertisers saying their paper's "reached" xxxxx people, when they were only printing maybe 2000 papers. It was the biggest flim flam I had ever seen, I finally told all of the paper owners in my area, that when one of them bought the rest out and I could reach my whole market I would buy ads again. They are all still fighting each other and going down in flames.

Yep. Thats how it could be explained.. For example: 2.5 readers per paper x 5,000 printed = 12,500 readers + a 5,000 TMC for one zip code = reach of 25,000. Even though the coverage area only had a population of, say, 10,000.

 

[dogmatic001]

It really does come down to local news being locally produced.

I was managing editor of a 7-day daily in 1999 when internet news delivery became a thing locally. I argued against putting the websites up for free, but it went that way because it was a chance for the publishers to give key print advertisers a little something extra.

In some cases, like in northeast Mississippi, one local paper has consolidated many of the weeklies. In most cases though, local papers weren't buying each other, they were being bought by conglomerates in hundred-paper holdings, then being squeezed to maximize profits above any and all sustainability. Thriving news rooms were soon as empty as the Memphis airport.

I'm always interested in why people recoil against paying for journalism delivered online.
The price we put on our products has a lot to do with the value buyers perceive them to hold.

It's a sad day when people who don't read local news believe they're well-informed.