In his commentary on KVOE on Wednesday, Steve Sauder gave voice to the sense of loss felt by Emporia subscribers at the Kansas City Star’s decision to stop delivering the paper here Monday through Saturday.
As Sauder pointed out, the Star’s readers feel abandoned and betrayed. They have shown their willingness to pay for the paper, so why is the Star not willing to sell it to them?
Sauder also made a good argument for a real ink-and-paper newspaper instead of the “E*Star” being offered to subscribers in its place. A real newspaper is portable and convenient. It does not require a reader to park at a desktop computer or haul a laptop around, looking for a wi-fi signal.
And, we will add, the crossword puzzles are just a pretty pattern of black and white squares on a computer screen. It requires a lot of time and keyboard skill to get a printout large enough to work without a microscope and tweezers.
For people who grew up in and around newspapers, the Star’s decision makes no sense at all. Since the invention of the rotary press and the Linotype machine, newspapers have been all about circulation. The more readers a paper could claim, the more it could charge for advertising space. Selling more copies allowed a paper to hire more good reporters, editors and photographer to do the work that would make even more people want to read the newspaper.
In a multiple-newspaper town, the paper that sold the most copies was the winner.
That was the old math for newspapers: Sell ads, publish news, get readers, turn a profit.
Now, there is a new math: Cut staff, cut news coverage, dump readers and use the temporary savings to bribe stockholders into buying more stock.
It is an odd math because, while it may increase the value of a company’s stock, it decreases the real value of the property the stock represents — the newspaper.
The Star’s decision to turn its back on its outlying readers, including its Emporia subscribers, was not wise. It was a bean-counter’s quick fix to satisfy a panicky board of directors at McClatchy Newspapers, which ordered these cuts at all of its newspapers around the nation.
In the end, such quick fixes may leave the Star beyond repair.
Comments
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Posted by jayhawker (anonymous) on July 17, 2008 at 1:54 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I think that this is just another step in a process that started when locally owned newspapers sold to the national giants. Of course, the internet and costs of publishing and distribution have added to the problem. I rarely agree with the Gazette editorially, but I do appreciate that we have kept a locally owned newspaper that does a good job of reporting local news. Not many communities have that.
Posted by netloafer (anonymous) on July 17, 2008 at 2:21 p.m. (Suggest removal)
My wife and I subscribed to the Star.
I don't think we can say that we felt betrayed by their decision to discontinue the Mon-Fri delivery here in Emporia.
They made an economic decision.like a lot of newspapers are doing nowadays. Advertising revenues are decreasing as on line news services supplant print editions. Big city newspapers (e.g. the L.A. Times) are laying reporters off, downsizing their overseas bureaus, and trying to find ways to cut costs. They're hemmoraging money. That's just the current reality.
If the Kansas City Star could find a way to make delivery in rural areas like ours profitable we'd still be getting it. While it was nice to get the print edition, I don't think it's realistic for me to expect the Star to provide it to me as a loss leader. They're in business to profit, just like any business here in Emporia is.
Posted by d23_66801 (anonymous) on July 17, 2008 at 2:42 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Well another thing taken from emporia, maybe we should look to Mrs. Walters for awnsers she seems to have all of them lately. This town is looking more and more like olpe.
Posted by gayzettesux (anonymous) on July 17, 2008 at 2:47 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Interesting that the Gazette would be complaining about less competition. Doesn't seem to make much sense business-wise.
Posted by acricket (anonymous) on July 17, 2008 at 3:34 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I am sorry to hear that the Star is not going to be available to Emporia all week. I enjoy my paper every morning. I was born and raised in Emporia 49 yrs ago and moved in 2001. I was able to read some of the Emporia paper online and really liked it, but now I can not see the complete deaths online and I think this is another way Emporia is moving backwords instead of ahead. So I just go to Kansas Newspapers online and I can see them in the Topeka or Wichita paper. Also i can see Burlington, Peabody you name it I can see all the deaths , but no not Emporia you have to pay to read the whole thing. If Emporia wants to grow they need to start going with the times. I thought one day I would come back to my Home town and live my life out and be buried there but no thanks ,by that time Emporia will be just a ghost town. I will stay where I am ,where everything is cheaper to live and wages are better.
Posted by sciguy (anonymous) on July 17, 2008 at 4:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)
What is really bewildering is that they aren't even offering it to LIBRARIES, and I doubt that schools are getting it any more either.
Kudos to the Topeka Capitol-Journal and the Wall Street Journal, both of which had solicitations to us within a week of the Star's failure.
Posted by smith_ron (anonymous) on July 17, 2008 at 8:39 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I had heard the Wichita Eagle (owned by the same company as the Star) had also stopped delivery in Emporia. Is this true?
Posted by qasey (anonymous) on July 18, 2008 at 6:08 p.m. (Suggest removal)
At least you can still buy the Wichita paper in newspaper racks about town, and you won't have to read Jason Whitlock!
Posted by bdprotheroe (anonymous) on July 19, 2008 at 1:31 p.m. (Suggest removal)
"Things, they are a changin'." Like an unexpected spring storm, the internet has charged through and changed life for all of us. This includes how we receive information, specifically media. With each passing day, fewer and fewer people purchase the news by way of paper. Print becomes out of date, instantly. The internet allows us to receive information immediately, not having to wait until the next day's edition. As it happens.
This is not a bad thing, no. Media is adapting, that is to say newspapers are finding new means of taking in revenue via advertising. Additionally, the number of readers becomes endless. We can receive news from a small town in India, just as a person in India is able to read up on the local happenings in Emporia via this website. On a sidenote, all of us who care about the environment will be happy about this, less trees are being cut down to produce newspapers.
It's a bit generational, I admit, but I will say that most of my peers (Generation X) receive information from the internet. Where do I begin? MSNBC.com, CNN.com, sfgate.com, nytimes.com, bbc.co.uk, kcstar.com, kansas.com, even emporiagazette.com... the sources are endless. Journalists and editors will still have jobs, they will just learn to be quicker, more agile and ready to log on and update readers with current events as they happen.
Being a fan of biographies, one historical figure I've read a lot about is William Allen White. He transformed The Emporia Gazette by leaps and bounds. I'm just guessing, of course, but I would think he would be pleased to see how media has evolved with the creation of the internet.
Brian Protheroe
San Francisco, CA
Posted by bdprotheroe (anonymous) on July 19, 2008 at 1:36 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Oops, I do believe the correct phrase is "Times, they are a changin'."
Posted by mythoughts (anonymous) on July 19, 2008 at 6:40 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I have really come to rely on being able to read the same story from at least two news sources. At this point, it looks like all we can get is Associated Press on the national and state news, and the Gazette on the local. The Gazette does a good job, if not always as thorough as we might like. They have to stay in business, you know, and pissing off the powerful in our rural community is not going to help.
It really worries me when I can read--verbatim--the same story about something of national import on KC Star, BBC and the NY Times. Where is the differing vantage point? Where is the culminatory explanation of what is going on? Where is the opportunity to find inconsistency in the story?
One of the FIRST STEPS towards dictatorship is totalitarian control of the media. If you can't find more than one version of a story, then it's time to be afraid for your personal liberty -- very afraid. That's one of my frustrations with media today (especially electronic media)--hardly anyone is looking to show the truth, but rather the "truth" that sells the most papers, or the "truth" that will make sure the doors don't get locked tomorrow.
I am so angry at the Star I could spit. I'm switching over to the Capital-Journal. I want a piece of paper in my hand every day, that I can fold, and read over coffee on the couch, that I can share with my partner, that I can clip out articles and mail to loved ones. I don't want to have to sit and wait for my turn at the internet connection before I can "read" the day's paper. The Star can bite my boney a....
I canNOT believe they have done this. Everyone please subscribe to the Gazette so they don't do the same. Times is hard!
Posted by truelovecharlie (anonymous) on July 19, 2008 at 8:11 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I can't believe a bunch of hoopla over the Star not servicing Emporia anymore. You get no local news; unless, it's a tragedy. You won't get local coupons or sale inserts. My hometown paper only publishes on Tuesdays and Fridays; therefore, everything is so old news by time you get it. The next towns paper publishes Tueasday-Friday and Sunday; what a stupid schedule. The best we have access to without the internet is the Hutch news and who wants to read a bunch of worthless news about a town not affecting you and yours. One should expect cuts like these with the ever rising prices of everything. The only way to maintain certain luxuries would be dramatic increases that would price them out of the market anyway.
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