The Union Leader has a pretty good story here about the demise of the Eagle Times newspaper by a former reporter and current UL correspondent: ["Claremont mourns loss of local voice"].
Interestingly, the owner said he couldn't subsidize the newspaper anymore. Well, that makes sense but it also makes me wonder a bit. Why were they hiring more people if things were so bad? Why were they closing titles instead of trying to sell them for at least something? This doesn't seem like good business to me. Everyone in the business is having to do more with less. I don't understand why they couldn't figure out a way to adapt. Could the Eagle Times be turned into a weekly or bi-weekly instead of a daily? A circ of 9,000 is pretty good but with so many employees, I can see where it might have been hard to make it work.
As daily newspapers go the way of the dodo, they do have options. Going to multiple editions a week or ending editions which are not popular are possibilities [I've written about this previously]. The Eagle Times didn't have a Saturday edition. Maybe it could have published Monday, Thursday, and Sunday, and done it with half the employees? I don't know. I'm just guessing. But it seems more than a little sad to close down a 175 year institution.
Update: The Monitor's great columnist Ray Duckler has a piece here about the shuttering of the newspaper: ["Paper vanishes; community reels"].
Interestingly, the owner said he couldn't subsidize the newspaper anymore. Well, that makes sense but it also makes me wonder a bit. Why were they hiring more people if things were so bad? Why were they closing titles instead of trying to sell them for at least something? This doesn't seem like good business to me. Everyone in the business is having to do more with less. I don't understand why they couldn't figure out a way to adapt. Could the Eagle Times be turned into a weekly or bi-weekly instead of a daily? A circ of 9,000 is pretty good but with so many employees, I can see where it might have been hard to make it work.
As daily newspapers go the way of the dodo, they do have options. Going to multiple editions a week or ending editions which are not popular are possibilities [I've written about this previously]. The Eagle Times didn't have a Saturday edition. Maybe it could have published Monday, Thursday, and Sunday, and done it with half the employees? I don't know. I'm just guessing. But it seems more than a little sad to close down a 175 year institution.
Update: The Monitor's great columnist Ray Duckler has a piece here about the shuttering of the newspaper: ["Paper vanishes; community reels"].
No comments:
Post a Comment