
The Chicago End-Times: The slow humiliation of Chicago’s most vital newspaper - samclemens
http://www.theawl.com/2015/10/the-chicago-end-times
======
Animats
Some newspapers go further. The San Francisco Chronicle and the Houston
Chronicle, among others, outsource their "fluff" sections to Demand Media.
Demand Media is a company which has low-paid people writing content for click-
troll sites. ("10 ways to ..." \- that's them.)

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ChuckMcM
_" It just needs a rich benefactor who isn’t, in the word of a former Sun-
Times employee, a 'fuckwad.'"_

I think what it actually needs is a business model that works. The whole
"pageviews, pageviews, pageviews" is about chasing ever diminishing returns on
ads from networks like Googles.

Perhaps the next owner can buy just the trademark for a small amount and build
a zero-office, zero-print, paid subscription model which will fund an editor,
some journalists, and a photographer to cover their beats. And perhaps a
"better-user-experience-than-craigslist" classified section and a maybe a
place to find out what is on sale in the neighborhood groceries and department
stores.

~~~
404error
I work for a newspaper and unfortunately it is all about "pageviews,
pageviews, pageviews". In the 10 years I have been here (I'm 30 now) the
newsroom has shrunk by 75%.

One of the first people to go was an opinion columnist whose phone always
rang. He would take calls from supporters and not so supportive people. But
the one thing that made him known, loved, hated...etc. was the fact that he
was out there talking to the people.

Now what's left of the newsroom, +/\- 10 people serving a community of
100,000+, are glued to their desk and dont leave the building unless its for a
council meeting. A lot of them spend there day fluffing press releases and
turning a quote into a full blown story.

I am in the minority in the building who believes having an informed public is
important. Maybe I should start my own blog/news site for my city. Maybe I can
convince some college kids to follow me and start rubbing elbows and pissing
of politicians.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Yup. There are so many legacy things in the newspaper business that make
running the business so difficult. When the San Jose Mercury News was dying in
the Bay Area I emailed back and forth with Dan Gillmor[1] on his take on it.
He is very passionate about being able to create new ways to inform and
educate the public for the common good.

The NY Times has done several pieces on the cost structures that weigh on
newspapers, in the early days of kindle the publisher suggested that they
could give away kindles to their subscriber base, and free up all the
resources of printing, storing, distributing, and managing the actual paper
business and be profitable, except that their customer base was firmly wedded
to the "paper experience" of picking up the paper and reading it widely on the
coffee table with a bagel.

So if we assume that people develop their habits in their 20's, ingrain them
in their 30's and 40's, and complain about the way things were in their 50's,
that is 25 - 30 years to clear the decks of a previous way of doing things and
replace it with a new way. We are about half-way through that transition with
Newspapers. Sources of news for people in their 20's is the web (and often
their phone as reader), and for people in their mid to late 40s and early 50's
still paper newspapers. In 2025 there won't be enough people who cares about
getting their newspaper on print to allow printing them to continue, and so
these new news agencies will be all digital. And with communications being
fast enough there won't be any need to have an office for everyone to meet in.
The equivalent of large scale Google Hangouts will suffice. And since random
advertising will be completely discredited by then the only place people will
advertise seriously will be with digital properties that charge a subscription
service (that makes Ad fraud much disproportionately more expensive for the
fraudsters) And once again subscriber base, not page views or clicks will
become a major influence on ad revenue. That will lead to a great renaissance
of good journalism which will be paid for by the ability of the
editor/publisher to make enough money to pay their staff.

Between here and there though, are the slowly rotting corpses of organizations
like the Sun-Times.

[1] [https://dangillmor.com/](https://dangillmor.com/)

~~~
404error
I have repeated some of the things here to my coworkers in the past. My city
for the most part is a community of retired people (baby boomers). They are
use to getting their paper, and get angry when the crosswords are missing.
You'd be surprised how many elderly people call and complain about little
things like that, or maybe it's not so surprising.

Social media has changed the way news is reported as well. Everyone is a
reporter now and by the time news agencies find out about an incident the
public knows more about it then they do.

If someone is around when an accident happens they snap a picture and post it
on facebook before offering the injured a helping hand. By the time a reporter
catches the beat the comments are full of more information than the reporter
could gather on their own. "Oh that's so and so....etc."

If you went to our website and removed all the click bait, advertising, "non-
news" items the page would: 1: load faster :) 2: be mostly empty

Sad times for newspapers.

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ghaff
Local news is effectively dead. Not completely, but it's limping even in large
markets. (Semi-entertainment, including sports, doesn't count.)

Of course, local news has always been hit and miss in secondary markets and
even a lot of big city newspapers weren't great but the situation has gotten
worse given that local news has to effectively carry its own freight now given
unbundling.

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neoCrimeLabs
Petapixel has had several stories on Chicago Sun-Times' slow melt down from
the perspective of their photographers.

The front page photo of the Stanley Cup had to be hugely humiliating for
anyone still employed at CST.

[http://petapixel.com/tag/suntimes/](http://petapixel.com/tag/suntimes/)

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rayiner
Sorry, that would be the Trib.

~~~
hissworks
Most dictionaries carry two definitions for vital, each of which apply
discretely to either publisher.

One is "of absolute importance or necessity" which I do believe applies to the
Tribune.

The secondary definition is "lively" and the Sun-Times has always been that.

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boxy310
While I'm not happy that long-read pieces like this go uncommented, I'm glad I
can at least find these here on HN where the signal-to-noise ratio is
sufficiently high.

~~~
monksy
It stayed on top of r/Chicago for quite a while.

