IWantMyRocky to become InDenverTimes

Former Rocky staffers are trying to put together an online news source with paid subscriptions. Should be interesting to see how this all develops. They need to get 50,000 subscribers before the end of April to make it happen.

I will be watching this one with hawk-like eyes to see how it all evolves. I hope they will be producing content that no other media outlet will be –other than some of the great writers and staffers that are bringing their talent to the table– otherwise why pay $60 for an annual online subscription when I can read The Denver Post online for free? Looking at the staff of INDT, I don't see any visual journalists yet either. Hope they rectify that as well.

We shall see. I hope it becomes a precedent, really.

The Google Way

This is a very good read and poses some issues that many are fearful to face or comprehend.

Simply put, photography is becoming a devalued practice because of the simple prevalence of imagery.

Then you can follow that up with a rant about the notion of Creative Commons licensing eating away at the value of photography.

Where is the industry and the craft heading? Who knows, all I do know is that pricing for photography was stuck in neutral for over a decade before the flooding of the market with cheap digital camera equipment and tools and photographers. I'm thinking the yoke for the photo plane is pretty much stuck in the forward position and picking up G's.

Seattle P-I could be an interesting test

Seems as though one more two-newspaper town will soon see a drastic change in the media landscape. Hearst only offered a select few of present staffers opportunity to work on an online-only version of the historic newspaper. Those offers don't look at that appealing, regardless of the market trends and current national and local economies. You'll have to take a peek and see what you think.

According to Castro, Riddick said Hearst plans to start the site the day after the paper quits publishing, which Hearst has said will occur on a date not yet specified if no buyer has emerged by March 10.

The P-I site has already been evolving towards the notion of a news portal rather than a news source of information for Seattle and King County, by linking to alt-mags and other news outlets in the area. Could be an interesting science project.

Still haven't heard much on the media radar about the experiment in Detroit with the reduced home delivery days. At least those to markets are trying something that spineless Scripps Howard didn't even want to attempt in Denver.

Newsprint is REALLY expensive

"...we're trying to say is that as a technology for delivering the news, newsprint isn't just expensive and inefficient; it's laughably so."

The Kindle retails for $359. A rough estimate for the NYTimes's delivery costs would be $644 million per year. Do the math and selling a Kindle to the 830,000 loyal subscribers would cut delivery costs in HALF.

End Times

A really solid story on the eminent tsunami of newspaper deaths to come, probably sooner than we expect.

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If you’re hearing few howls and seeing little rending of garments over the impending death of institutional, high-quality journalism, it’s because the public at large has been trained to undervalue journalists and journalism. The Internet has done much to encourage lazy news consumption, while virtually eradicating the meaningful distinctions among newspaper brands. The story from Beijing that pops up in my Google alert could have come from anywhere. As news resources are stretched and shared, it can often appear anywhere as well: a Los Angeles Times piece will show up in The Washington Post, or vice versa.

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Bigger dominoes beginning to fall

This last week was graced with the unpleasant announcement that E.W. Scripps has put the Rocky Mountain News up for sale. The flagship newspaper for the company that has won four Pulitzers in the past eight years.

This, in the midst of a month where more than 500,000 Americans lost jobs. Those are just the ones that filed for unemployment mind you, there could be many more undocumented.

Then two days later reports are that The McClatchy Company is putting a FOR SALE sign on their flagship The Miami Herald.

Denver will most likely become a single newspaper town, as there will probably not be someone crazy enough to buy a property that is losing over $1 million a month in a competitive market and in a declining industry. Sadly, hundreds more will be added to that skyrocketing unemployment statistic, but those additions will be people I know. People I respect. People that care about the Fourth Estate.

Scary thing is I didn't think all these troubles would come this soon. I knew that the first quarter of 2009 was going to be a bloody mess, but before Christmas bells had even begun to ring? The acceleration in the decline of the newspaper business, as well as the economy in general, is speeding up much faster than many thought would be possible. The first quarter of 2009 may just look like the basement of Leatherface's Texas Home.

Let the bottlenecking begin!!!

So one of the Fox and NBC stations in Philly are going to "pool" the video operations of the two news organizations in an effort to cut costs. Brilliant!! Lessen the scope of journalism even more. The newsrooms will be independent of each other in how they edit or use the footage.

The ever growing notion of doing more with less in journalism.

Mr. Wallace added, “We see no downside on this.”

Only that showing the exact same content on two competing stations will dilute your audience even more, thus weakening your advertising base further. Nope, not a single downside. Nor the jobs that can now be eliminated to reduce costs.

And the fat cats in the corporate offices wonder why their market share is only shrinking ever more rapidly. How about producing unique content that no other news org has? If you are the only one with it, where are the viewers going to have to look for it? I guess on your competition's 10 o'clock newscast.

The dominoes are starting to fall

Once the campaign advertising dollars stop flowing in by the truck-load, the majority coming from the Obama media machine, the advertising dollars will dry up like the lakes east of Los Angeles have.

Let's face it, we're in the midst of a recession. Advertising dollars are the first to go from budgets. Advertising is the rocket fuel for newspapers in print, whereas the ad dollars from the online version resemble the concoction of two-stroke motor oil and unleaded gasoline. You don't see NASA using two-stroke to get the space shuttle into orbit do you?

That recession is going to prevent many from spending too many ad dollars for the holidays, let alone some general advertising. Newspapers are beginning to topple before the election has even come to a close. The first quarter of 2009 is going to look like a scene out of the movie "Saw."

The question becomes: Do we cut off integral parts of the paper in an effort to free it for possible growth online? But if the recent digestion of data is any clue, cutting all the aspects of each newspaper might not work.

The first few dominoes have started to fall, how far will they go?

Is digital photography killing photography?

The advent of inexpensive equipment that allows for even more photographers to produce photography. I paid nearly $4,000 for a Nikon D1H in 2004. I recently picked up a D300 that is nearly 20 times the camera for $1700. And don't forget to add inflation, it would be over $4,700. I remember buying a Nikon N90s film camera for about $1,000 in 1994 and thought it was unreasonable. Boy, was I wrong. The Kodak DCS420 was about $12,000 in 1994. Your cell phone now has twice the resolution the 420 had.

Eventually supply and demand market forces take over and the imagery becomes worth less and less. Add to the dog pile the notion of people willing to give their content away for free so that they can say they have been "published" or in hopes of getting "more business" and you have a recipe for destruction. One more layer to make it truly gloomy? Working photographers struggling to make ends meet in this harsh economy begin to under-cut each other's bids to get work.

All that adds up to an acceleration of inexpensive photography to go with the relatively inexpensive gear.

CNN's iReport and the like go even farther to destroy the notion of a working photojournalist. Why pay for the cow when the milk is free?

Sure, I'm a Flickr user. But I reserve copyright on all my images. Many don't and leave their work open to Creative Commons. Others give their work to Getty in an over-saturated stock photo market.

What's the future of photography? I don't know, but I'm thinking of buying a bunch of silver gelatin paper from Europe since it's fading so fast here in the US, finding a sweet Leica enlarger at a garage sale and preparing for the rebirth of traditional process.

A business opportunity in Colorado?

Those Canucks may have figured out a way to use beetle-killed trees for newsprint. Since the price for newsprint is going through the stratosphere, why not figure out a way to go local?

Just need some investment capital to set up a shop in Silverthorne or Dillon and fire up the chainsaw. 

Media Needs a Makeover

Rob Haggart reinforces the notion that content is king. Media outlets need to stop chasing those "every once in a while" readers/viewers and capitalize on the readers/viewers that are consuming.

How many times has it been said....

The Krauts are doing pretty well

It's looking more and more that if you want to work for a newspaper, you might look at going international. Asia's papers are exploding. Europe's papers are gaining more and more traction. South America still gets its info from lady grays.

The last line of this post is striking.

Parting Thoughts

The Columbia Journalism Review has set up a place for those that have left or pushed out the door of journalism to reflect. After reading Jim Spencer's piece, I'm looking forward to reading a few more in hopes of finding some solace. Solace in knowing that once I walk out the door of a newspaper in several weeks I'm not alone in feeling like I'm walking away from one of the most important and passionate aspects of my career.

Pew's stinky report

"Another diminishing skill set, interestingly, is photographers," the report says. "Overall, 31% of newspapers say they have cut back on photographers in the last three years, vs. 12% that had made net increases. At the biggest papers, this trend is more pronounced, with the majority reporting cutbacks on photographers (52%) and just 6% saying they had made net additions."

The underwhelming conclusion of the report is that as papers cut staff so goes the content. BRILLIANT!! Great idea, make a less desirable product for an already shrinking audience. That'll make all those greedy investors happy. I'm sure of it.

Ok, time to go get a tow truck to remove the tongue from my cheek.

Vanishing Americana

This website predicts that film cameras are at #13 of 25 things that will vanish from America.

At #23 is Newspaper Classifieds

The classifieds thing, I can see. Given some of the scary numbers the last few days from the newspaper industry, a few papers all together will cease to exist. The film camera on the other hand, will shrink and in time become a coveted form of art because of the limited number of people that know how to use film and traditional printing well.

This made me throw up a little in my mouth

Alan Mutter figures the companies have lost a cumulative $49.7 billion in market capitalization in 3 1/2 years, vaporizing 51% of shareholder value since Dec. 31. 2004.

Found via Romenesko

Time spent on "newspaper" sites down

Wonder what the cause is? Is it not enough time to spend reading because people work two and three jobs? Or is it because the content presented and published just isn't of interest or decent quality with the blood letting in the industry?

'Til Debt Do Us Part

Not to be a doom and gloomer with the recent posts, but......

Editor & Publisher story about how newspaper debt is strangling the industry and the cost cutting might not help in the long run.

Newspaper cuts on a map

Here's a nifty Google map with known staff reductions at US newspapers. Kind of ugly and sick to look at, but basically where there's a higher population there's a higher reduction of staff. The number of those cut the last 13 months is staggering.

Found via cyberjournalist.net

Are you kidding me? $3.50?

Sad to learn some very pertinent information about the company that owns the paper I work for from a blogger in the company rather than our own management. It's pathetic that management doesn't have the stomach to pull everyone into a quick meeting and explain what is going to happen when the company is split into to separate companies. Thankfully there are bloggers out there digging up the information and sharing it, if only a few are finding it.