Editor’s Note
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Archive for December 16th, 2008

Detroit newspapers go 3X

6 comments December 16th, 2008

Follow these numbers: There are two newspapers in Detroit. Their two owners share one Joint Operating Agreement. Between the two, they published 13 editions a week and shared a Sunday newspaper. They support two news Web sites: freep.com and detnews.com

Beginning in early 2009, the two newspapers will radically remix the products in their portfolio by upping the stake in online and lowering their holdings in newsprint. And, if you haven’t already heard this: They will deliver a newspaper to your doorstep three days a week. On Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, subscribers get a newspaper. The other four days? Buy it at the newsstand or read it online.

There have been rumblings throughout the industry that this model was being explored for Detroit’s hugely troubled metro newspapers. I suspect few believed it until the formal announcement today. The traditional mindset just can’t wrap its head around the idea that news wouldn’t be delivered seven days a week to the door.

Detroit’s plan is to deliver the newspaper three days a week, pump up single copy sales, offer an e-edition (full newspaper online); and beef up their Web sites. The strategies are bold ones, and Detroit, with little left to lose, may be the right place to test them. And, frankly, if Detroit doesn’t do this or some version of it, one or both of those newspapers might not be around much longer. Detroit is not the most thriving of cities, nor Michigan for that matter.

So, you ask, will Rockford do the same thing? Nah; not likely; not now; but maybe someday. We are not the same kind of market as Detroit. Look for the “do not deliver every day” models to spread first in the big cities. It could happen out of Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia. All newspapers are hurting, but the metros are in serious hurt.

The pain of mid-sized papers, like Rockford, is a teensy headache compared with those metros. They’re cutting off their heads; we’re taking some serious pain relievers.  The day will come — and I have written about it many times — that we don’t do a printed newspaper everyday. Just not likely to be right away. But, I’m playing around with possibilities, just in case.