2009.07.30
Bring back the World-News!
David Carr's Media Decoder blog at The New York Times brings us the news of a 24-year-old business school grad whose plan to reverse the fortunes of the newspaper industry is ... start a p.m. newspaper. Um. Hmm.
The afternoon World-News already had been combined with the morning Roanoke Times when I first set foot in the building here on Campbell Avenue, but a p.m. edition of The Roanoke Times & World-News remained in the weekday cycle for Roanoke Valley subscribers. A few years farther down a road of declining circulation, though, the newspaper killed it off.
Toward the end, I recall from my newsroom days, we gave it a push. No more scrambling for enterprise stories and news update to give the p.m. something fresh. Diehard p.m. readers didn't like the change, but - atypically for Roanoke - the brouhaha quickly died down. At least, that's the way I remember it.
Now Carr reports that this young fellow in Toronto has noticed "the afternoon represents an unmolested day part in the media cycle and presents a real business opportunity." Must send memo to publisher asap.
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An evening edition may not be profitable, but the lack of fresh news throughout the day has without a doubt contributed to the decline in newspaper readership nationwide. I know for myself, I never buy a newspaper anymore because it is about as rare as a Yeti sighting to actually find a story that I haven't already read on the internet or seen on cable news. I'm not sure what the answer is, as publishing and delivering an evening edition would almost certainly entail more cost than it would generate revenue, but I do think this young man has correctly recognized one of the biggest problems with printed news today. That being by the time it hits the streets, it is typically old news.
Comment by C Ramsey — July 31, 2009 @ 9:00 am