Thursday, March 12, 2009

Vicious cycle, or shooting ourselves in the foot

1. People stop subscribing to/advertising/otherwise supporting newspapers.

2. Newspapers lay off people in droves. Or they close altogether.

3. Newspapers decline in quality and shrink in size.

4. Fewer people read newspapers.

5. Mr. Trillwing, a newspaperman, finds out many of his responsibilities are being outsourced to someone whose labor is even less expensive than his. He loses about 1/3 of his take-home income.

6. We decide to save some of the money we lost by getting only the Sunday paper.

5 comments:

grumpyABDadjunct said...

Oh god! I'm subscribing to three weekend papers now just to prevent this kind of thing, are my efforts in vain? The NYT has an article about which big city will be the first to go without a daily paper - scary times. I'm not sure people realize that when you lose the physical paper you also lose the online version.

Arbitrista said...

Man, that's terrible.

Heather Clisby said...

Yeesh. It's a vicious cycle.

The Accidental Pharmacist said...

It's hard to know what's right. I think the demands on the newspaper industry are changing so fast that the next news model is in its infancy. We have newspaper family members too and can't decide what to support. That said, we are down to the Saturday paper to save $$.

loveitallabove said...

subscribe to Oakland Tribune, SF Chronicle and NYTimes...doin' our part for the Bay Area!

From the Trib I expect little and get some. From the Chron I expect much and get less...and I get so much from the Times it should be a crime, according to many deep thinkers who think it's just not that good. Mayeb I'm just not that deep.