del.icio.us
E-mail this
FacebookThe Tribune announced Tuesday that it’s starting up a tabloid version of itself. Next Monday it becomes available in the Tribune's newspaper boxes and at newsstands and commuter stations. Says publisher Tony Hunter in a memo: "Many consumers have been telling us that they wanted more 'friendly'' packaging, while insisting the edition includes all the useful, high-quality news and information that's in the broadsheet. They asked, and we will deliver."
Hunter's memo is addressed to "Fellow owners," thus maintaining the fiction that the Tribune Company's employees, who are suffering through large and continuing layoffs, have some say in the operation.
Several years ago, in the pre-Sam Zell era, Trib managers studied prototypes and seriously kicked around the idea of creating a tabloid version of the paper for the lucrative and growing west suburban market, where the paper wasn't making headway. A debate raged over whether a tabloid Trib should be a more tabloidish Trib or should maintain the gray gravity of the broadsheet, and gravity won out. But in the end the idea was dropped as too big and expensive a gamble.
Today the picture's very different. The Tribune Company's in bankruptcy, the Sun-Times is clinging to life by its fingernails, weighing such extreme measures as outsourcing the copy editing to India, and more Chicagoans pick up RedEye for nothing than either the Tribune for 75 cents or the Sun-Times for 50. Gravity's no longer the watchword, and the Tribune has been redesigned under Zell to lose mass but add chrome and now looks and reads a lot more like RedEye, its kid brother.
According to the most recent figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Tribune single-copy sales -- sales that will now be of the tabloid version of the paper -- amounted to only 9 percent of the paper's average weekday circulation, about 46,000 papers out of 516,000. Sun-Times single copy sales were nearly 187,000, about 60 percent of its average 313,000 weekday circulation.
So relatively few Tribune readers will see the tabloid. Of those who do, some will probably think, "Say, this is better!" while others think, "The Trib looks more like RedEye than ever, so maybe that's what I should read and save my money." But the tab Tribune also will look a lot more like the Sun-Times. How many of that paper's single-copy readers -- its lifeblood -- will think, "I like a tab. Maybe I should spend an extra quarter and get a lot more newspaper"?
And if the new and breezier Tribune discovers that the tab format suits it and its readers, it can take step two and become a tab all the way. Introducing a tab Tribune "smacks of desperation," says someone who knows that paper well; but these days, what doesn't? The Tribune is desperate, though not as desperate as the Sun-Times, which has been devastated by RedEye and now has another dragon to face.
Yet another feeble attempt by Tribco to run a business it knows how to run - a monopoly!
Geesh any idiot could run that kind of operation. hmm . . . without that pesky Sun-Times the paper would have a lock on the market.
.
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/towerticker/20...
.
As you'll see, it's mostly negative. But not only that, people seem to be really, really upset. Whether the Trab makes any sense strategically or economically, readers seem to be utterly fed up with the constant, counterproductive, sophomoric, deceptive (all that "doing more with less" and "right-sizing" crap) stuff that's being pitched at them by the clueless Zell people.
.
Here are some facts: Most newspapers, including the Tribune are profitable and viable, or would be if not saddled with grossly inflated shareholder/debtor expectations of making fabulous profits off the backs of journalists, who actually work for a living. Newspapers are also a mature industry. Over the generations, through slow, evolutionary change, they've established a certain way of imparting information to their readers. THAT'S THE ASSET! They're a stable touchstone in a blizzard of infotainment crap and propaganda delivered by ever newer and less credible sources.
.
If newspapers could just bring themselves to going entirely offline and getting their news services offline as well, they'd be even more (though still modestly) viable. Of course, none of these hallucinating investors/debtors/media execs with big dollar signs pasted to their eyeballs are even talking about that.
.
Whatever happened to the idea that it's the journalists' job to find out what it is that readers should know? Have they lost all confidence in their ability to do their own jobs? Have they abandoned any sense of responsibility for delivering important news? Have they just surrendered themselves to the lazy notion that the way forward is just to churn out day after day of consumerist/celebrity slop because a handful of self-involved yuppie suburbanites in a focus group said that's what they want?
.
The fact is, I doubt even self-involved yuppie suburbanites really want crap in their newspapers. They, and we, are incapable of saying what we really want, because we don't know until we see it. And that's the job of real journalists, to find the good stuff and deliver it.
.
Apparently, that has been forgotten, or set aside. And if it has been deliberately set aside, I suspect it's because finding and printing real news is expensive, while the consumery/celebrity crap is cheap and fills up lots of space. Also, it doesn't upset anyone powerful.
When I read Tony Hunter’s above memo in the Trib my first thought was, “Which consumers, when did they ask and how did they put forth their request.”. What did people do, send a letter to the Editor asking for a tabloid version of the paper? When the CEO of the Chicago Tribune Media Group tries to peddle this manure in the name of being responsive to consumer requests then I have to question the integrity (what remains) of the paper as a whole. I feel just awful for the rank and file because there was a time, whether you agreed with the editorial board or not, that the Trib was a pretty good paper.
And has anyone told you senile old farts that the Reader is supposed to be a young demographic paper, too? Maybe that's why the RedEye's kicking the Reader's ass--because it's giving the young demographic what it wants, not a bunch of senile old fart Boomers.
Why don't you senile old farts go kill yourselves and let the new generation take over?
It's all yours. Take over. All you've got to do is convince advertisers that the "key demographic" can read, and they'll beat a path to your . . . you know, um, whatever.
Ben Joravsky did try to launch a competing blog about the reality show "The Hills," but it turns out it wasn't his metier. Back to local politics for him!
Desperate times call for desperate measures ... and, boy, are these guys desperate.
The Tribune brand has already been devalued to the point where it's practically worthless. Why not simply re-name the newspaper Red Eye Plus, The Printed Cubs or Lee Abrams' Plaything, thereby avoiding all of the negative baggage "Tribune" carries with it within the city limits and at El stops. People who buy the S-T for the columnists and city coverage -- or, whatever's left of it -- won't be fooled by a hideous design ... not for 75 cents, anyway.
Members of the key demographics won't pay 75 cents, either, but you might be able to fool them for a couple of weeks, anyway. Then, too, the company might consider zoning the names to suit individual subscribers and suburbs. Geezers in non-key demos -- those who still read -- can grandfather the rights to receiving the "Tribune" until they die or cancel their subscriptions ... whichever comes first.
Must be nice to be sponging off the taxpayers as a tenured college professor instead of getting off your lazy butt, being an entrepeneur and giving the public what it wants, ivory tower intellectual elitist snob who hates ordinary people who work for a living. If you hate our free enterprise system so much, why don't you GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY AMERICA?
And you elitist snobs wonder why America hates you intellectuals, why the New York Post is America's fastest-growing newspaper and why FOX NEWS CHANNEL is THE MOST POWERFUL NAME IN NEWS. It's called GIVING THE PUBLIC WHAT IT WANTS--how about doing that for a change?