The Capitol Fax Blog » Question of the day

Wednesday, Jan 9, 2008

* As you probably know by now, the Sun-Times is cutting staff to patch a $50 million budget hole…

The Chicago Sun-Times plans 40 layoffs at month’s end, including as many as 35 newsroom staffers.

The Sun-Times itself reported that as many as 27 Newspaper Guild-represented copy editors, designers and reporters will be laid off, although none of those targeted will be sportswriters covering major beats or the newspaper’s photographers.

The Sun-Times currently has 188 Guild-represented positions. It also represents editorial assistants and other newsroom personnel. […]

Crain’s Chicago Business reported that the newspaper’s efforts to increase revenues in the past year fell flat. Instead, Crain’s reported, Security and Exchange Commission filings show that ad revenue fell 10 percent during the first nine months of 2007, to $214.9 million.

These cuts come on top of previous mass layoffs at its other properties and others announced yesterday, plus a reduction in the paper’s size.

Question: Will the Sun-Times still be alive a year from now? Two years from now? Explain.

Also, do you care?

- posted by Rich Miller

63 Comments

- Anon - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:14 am:
Let them all go. I’m fine with the internet and cable news. The pompous and callous nature of reporters has lead to their demise. They report with nor regard for the facts. Rich, what I admire about you is that, while you report on the shortcomings of our government and elected officials, and even have a few laughs at their expense, you give credit where credit is due. You are fair, and that is what most of these reporters have lost.

Hopefully the Trib isnt far behind. I only hope that Cornelia Grumman is the first to get her walking papers.

- tom73 - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:14 am:
I can only hope they are alive in a year or two, as I cannot imagine how much worse living in Chicago will be with only one metro newspaper–and one that often seems more interested in the ‘burbs than the city.

I suspect the ST will be alive, but only in bare-bones form, and with far too many useless columnists who can’t report.

- If It Walks Like a Duck... - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:17 am:
Thanks to the corporate greed of Hollinger Inc. and Conrad Black, I’m afraid the sun will set on the Times. Though I’m a lifelong Tribune person, I’ll miss the viewpoint the Sun-Times offers.

We all pay the price of corruption, either in government or corporations.

- Niles Township - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:21 am:
Sun-Times will be gone in the 24 - 36 month time frame. It will be a shame. I’m not a huge fan of the paper, but I believe competition breeds success. The Trib’s competitor, whether they like it or not, is more the Sun-Times than the NY Times. Less competition means less hustling on the beat. Denials of that don’t mesh with the history of other cities that became one horse shows.

- Ravenswood Right Winger - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:27 am:
I hope so, as I fear what the Chicago Tribune would be like without any competition.

On the other hand, if the Sun-Times folds, perhaps Michael Sneed will visit Perry Como’s grave.

- DumberThanYouThink - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:27 am:
THe papers really don’t compete anymore
Sun Times will last three years
FYI to the Mope who bashed Cornelia —She moved on to some educational foundation work late last year. Glad to see you are current.

- Carol Marin - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:29 am:
Will the Sun-Times live on?
There’s a whole–if sadly smaller–newsroom fighting every day to make it so. We are proud of our paper, fiercely determined to keep breaking serious stories, and plan to keep on keeping on. No obituary for us please. CAROL MARIN

- Kiyoshi Martinez - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:30 am:
Will the Sun-Times still be alive a year from now? Two years from now? Explain.

It depends if you mean the entire newsgroup or the Chicago paper specifically. I think the CST still will be around in two years. Cutting $50 million and staff does save the company significant costs — or at least enough to last two years.

Frankly, they need to find a way to generate more revenue and tap into the online Chicago news market and dominate it. The CST already writes really short, so it makes sense to me that they should abandon their gawdawful webpage layout they have now and go to a more blog-based format that’s just about sheer news volume on a constant 24/7 updating cycle. Finding the latest news on their site is a pain and it’s inefficiently organized. They need to not look like the competition to the Tribune’s website and alter their online strategy dramatically if they want to capitalize on that niche.

As for the rest of their papers, it’ll depend on how serious they are about executing a hyperlocal news strategy. Also, I think their reliance on the paid subscription model is flawed.

Also, do you care?

Yes, competition is a good thing. The number of two-newspaper towns is too small in this country.

- amy - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:35 am:
it will be difficult for the Sun Times to last.
they need to make some hard choices, but
the choice should be to go for good reporting
and some amazing quality columns
over silly columns. Neil Steinberg, Jay
Mariotti, Elliot Harris, the fixer, sorry, you
gotta go. take the money and support the
investigative reporters, ebert and roeper,
cathleen falsani, Jim DeRogatis and the
marvelous new
editorial page guru, Cheryl Reed.
the paper should aggressively sell at train
stations…..it’s easier to read than
the Trib on the train…and it should
promote the best of the columnists and pitch
the rest.

while they are at it, why not drop the contract
of that rat Novak. save the money. keep ebert
and roeper.

- The 'Broken Heart' of Rogers Park - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:36 am:
Start to worry when they start cutting your column in half.

- Rich Miller - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:37 am:
They already did. lol

- Bluefish - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:40 am:
The S-T already appears to be entering an advanced stage of starvation. Bare bones with much fewer pages, less articles, fewer big blow-you-away investigative stories that scoop the Trib, and the classified section and advertisements (i.e. the revenue makers) have become a shadow of what they were. Plus, they recently dumped their opinion section on Sundays and just do the standard two pager in the Mon-Fri version.

Sure, they’re still only 50 cents, but lately that is not even a page per penny. I’m a S-T fan, but I’m not optimistic about their future.

- Fan of the Game - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:41 am:
It will subsist for at least two more years, and I care because, like others, I want that competition and an array of viewpoints.

In the long run, however, print papers will see major reductions in readership and greater competition from online sources like the Capital Fax Blog. The newspaper companies will either transform or die.

- Poli-Sci Geek - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:43 am:
I grew up reading the Sun-Times. It covers Chicago better than the Trib, but you can’t even get home delivery in SPI. The Sun-Times used to be a great investigative paper. Does anyone remember the Mirage? Let’s hope they’ve stopped the bleeding. Chicago with only the Trib looking over the City and into the burbs would be sad. (and it is harder to read the trib on the El or bus.)

- Kiyoshi Martinez - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:46 am:
Neil Steinberg, Jay Mariotti, Elliot Harris, the fixer, sorry, you gotta go.

Or they could just turn them into bloggers with a base salary and pay them bonuses according to their page view traffic.

My prediction for newspapers is that journalists will start being held accountable for their page views. It’s only a matter of time before corporate heads start to realize they can easily gauge how valuable a reporter is to the company through analytics tools.

- Ghost - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:47 am:
SUn Times will terend into an online publication. SJ-R is headed there. it will sruvive as an online publication drawing most of its stories from the AP wire with a few local reporters and sporting event coverage.

- A Citizen - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:48 am:
It will last two years until Rich buys it and turns to true in depth investigative reporting of corruption and shady deal making in Illinois State Govt. and Chicago, Cook County! Then it will have enough fodder to last another century.

- DumberThanYouThink - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:50 am:
Just read Steinberg and Marin….if that’s all they got they may not last 3 weeks

- Fire Ron Guenther - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:53 am:
I am more intrigued as to what will happen to their smaller newspapers, like the Naperville & Joliet papers which have gone to the dogs. Maybe just eliminate/sell those?

- Siyotanka - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:53 am:
Print is dead…

- so-called "Austin Mayor" - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:58 am:
Will the Sun-Times still be alive a year from now? Two years from now? Explain.

The Sun-Times will still be a daily tabloid two years from now. But I don’t see how it can continue as a news organization in light of these cuts and — more importantly — the philosophy behind the cuts.

I thought that the Sunday Controversy section might be a glimpse of the S-T’s future — local and best-of-the-internet commentary on the news of the day and current events rather than actual news gathering — because that would distinguish them from the Tribune and provide them with a steady stream of news-like content. But then the S-T dropped the Controversy section.

So the S-T seems to be backing away from news reporting but failing to replace it with non-wire service newsish content. That is not a recipe for long-term success.

Also, do you care?

Yeah, I care. Because they are the last bastion of local investigatory news, we should all care about our local newspapers.

That said, we may be screwed.

– SCAM

- Kiyoshi Martinez - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 11:02 am:
SUn Times will terend into an online publication. SJ-R is headed there. it will sruvive as an online publication drawing most of its stories from the AP wire with a few local reporters and sporting event coverage.

I doubt any non-major metro market can sustain an online-only hyperlocal publication. It’s been tried several times and failed (google “backfence.com” or “bayosphere”). Advertising revenue is too weak and your audience is too small creating a self-defeating model. The printed product is your number one marketing tool and revenue generator for your website in a hyperlocal publication. Get rid of that, you’re probably going to fail.

- jerry 101 - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 11:03 am:
i may subscribe to help keep them afloat. I don’t want to see this city become a one paper town.

They need to totally revamp their website, and revamp local coverage. Concentrate on reporting on the city (and the state), and leave the national and suburban garbage to the Trib. The suburban papers should concentrate on their coverage areas, and also ditch the national and international coverage (if there is any).

And totally revamp the website.

- 2for2 - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 11:06 am:
As long as men need to go to the bathroom, the Sun-Times will continue to exist in print form. Seriously. The Tribune is too bulky for the stall and a lap top just won’t cut it. I think the CST needs to stop all delivery (The delivery stinks anyway) and become a paper for Downtown. Where do people read the Sun-Times? On the bus, on the train, at lunch and, yes, in the stall. The Tribune is for coffee before work at the kitchen table. The Times is for the rest of the day. They might also want to consider becoming a late afternoon or evening rush hour paper. That will allow them to give more detailed analysis on the day before’s news and possibly cover events from early in the day.

Keep fighting Carol!

- Captain America - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 11:24 am:
Chicago is a large enough metropolis to support two major newspapers, It will be a tragedy if the ST goes under.

Sadly, I belive the ST will eventually cease publication. I don’t particularly like the tabloid-style front page stories they’ve been running.

But I guess there will be an opportunity for other journalistic entrepreneurs like Rich Miller to meet develop products and services to meet specific niche interests.

- Doug Dobmeyer - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 11:33 am:
Just as the “experts” said radio was dead years ago, print and the CST will survive. I hope they do it better than the Defender has though.

The CST is burdened with idiot writers like Roeper who like to see their name in print rather than substance.

Writers like Tim Novak, Chris Fusco, and Dave McKinney are the backbone of today’s reporting staff. They don’t always get it right, but more often than not.

The paper pales in comparison to the heyday under Marshall Field when it raised hell in this city.

The alternative is to be stuck w/the Trib - pompous conservative paper that sometimes fills a purpose, but far from the World’s Greatest newspaper!

Keep buying the CST and believe over time things will get better.

Doug Dobmeyer

- Ghost - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 11:35 am:
Kiyoshi I dont disagree with you based on current market information. My guess is that they trim and trim until they trim the print away. The future viability of selling classified adds and banner adds may allow them some form of meager existance in the future.

The ideas for yahoo and google were dismissed early on, no way to make revenue off of portal sites etc. Same comment about free e-mail. Also keep in mind that bumble bee’s are not supposed to be able to fly, but they do anyway :) so yah never know.

- Dooley Dudright - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 11:38 am:
We’re mere months away from the Chicago Trib-Times.

I mean — dontcha all think it’s part of Sam “The Carrion Man” Zell’s plan?

Buy the Sun-Times at fire sale, spin off anything financially viable (e.g., Roger Ebert), and merge the two papers.

Just like buying Tribune Co. and spinning off the choice bits (e.g., Cubs, WGN, LA Times). And sticking the turkeys (Wrigley Field, local papers) elsewhere.

Hey, the Trib-Times also will be a turkey, thanks to new media. In a few years, watch Sam offload that, too, on some poor optimist.

- clj - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 11:45 am:
Sadly technology will win the day. How many people already get the basics from the media on their blackberry or palm. And with the explosion of iphones and clones, electronic media will dominate.

- Ghost - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 11:45 am:
Dooley thats basically what happened in Denver with their two newspapaers (now just one)

- pickles!! - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 11:48 am:
All they gotta do is can Jay Mariotti, he’s probably sucking up the money….

Yes, the Sun Times wil continue to exist. Newspapers are in a real tight spot now, as people look more and more to electronic and digital media, and newspapers need to adapt to that. But there will always be a place for the newspaper

- Enemy of the State - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 11:57 am:
How can the old media attract new readers? They can’t. Print is dead so bury it. I won’t miss it.

- Kiyoshi Martinez - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 12:10 pm:
The ideas for yahoo and google were dismissed early on, no way to make revenue off of portal sites etc. Same comment about free e-mail. Also keep in mind that bumble bee’s are not supposed to be able to fly, but they do anyway :) so yah never know.

I’d argue portal sites are dead along with the burst of the dot coms. Yahoo! is one of the few success stories in the area, but they can’t figure out what their direction really is. Is it news? Is it user-generated content? Is it information? The good news is that they have heavy traffic stats.

Google, however, is NOT a portal. They base their model on search and algorithms. Even their revenue is based off of search. The reason why they’re able to make the Internet a successful business is because they’ve made an aggressive entry into innovating the online advertising market through text ads and contextual advertising.

The problem with newspaper companies is that they don’t have research and development arms that look how to create innovative technologies that can generate revenue. Instead, they’re reactionary to their environment. They patch together services they buy from other companies and then completely miss the point of what a web company based around information should be doing online.

And right now they’re so late in the game they can’t recover. What computer programmer or engineer is going to want to work for a newspaper company when companies like Google are offering such tremendous salaries and benefits. If newspapers can’t even buy the talent to fill their sports pages, how can they even attempt to break into the innovative technology side of the industry?

- zatoichi - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 12:23 pm:
Read the ST growing up. Now I see a copy 1-2 x a year. Means nothing to me. However, their problem is the same any local paper is facing: how do you keep up with technology, deal with costs, and have a product people want to buy. Hit local hard to allow local people to see their picture and names in print. News webs/blogs may cover big stories well (eventually), but I get far more from a paper than a screen any day through casual looking. Web base is OK but it gets old and hard to simply scan for interesting stuff. Besides paying $500-$1,000 for a device to view the news is nuts. There are times I just need to be away from a stupid screen.

- Lefty Lefty - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 12:31 pm:
The problem with the SunTimes is the same problem across all traditional media. Sometime in late 70s/early 80s the news became a product for sale instead of an end in itself. The continuing decline in the relevance of the local paper media–Trib, S-T, the Reader, the TV news–is a result of financial decisions that turn the product into a joke. Instead of creating and innovating and breaking new stories and attempting to get the public’s interest, the media cut staff, print wire stories, and make the ads bigger so that you can’t even find the story on the page sometimes.

There will always be daily newspapers. Whether the ST exists in a year or two and what it will look like and contain is up to the boneheads that run it. Currently the page one headlines are inane, the announcement that it will be a liberal/progressive voice to counter the Trib was BS, and the reaction to hard times by cutting its quality makes no sense whatsoever. Plus the STNG websites are horrible.

- Reality Check - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 12:41 pm:
Speaking as a close watcher of the Sun-Times for more than a decade, the paper’s demise has been predicted more times than I can count, and thankfully it’s still around. So I’m not betting against it now.

Investigative reporting, coverage of city and county politics, arts criticism, local sports columnists, Carol Marin and the reinvigorated editorial page are all advantages for the Sun-Times over the Tribune. If that’s not enough to overcome the admittedly huge challenges the paper faces — some of them from self-inflicted wounds, of course — it will be a grave loss for Chicago.

- Jim Rockford - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 12:55 pm:
Without the Sun-Times, where am I going to find a paper that can report on extensive corruption in the Blagojevich administration and yet endorse him for re-election?

- Levois - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 1:07 pm:
I couldn’t even begin to tell you whether or not the Sun-Times will still be here. I can’t even tell you if the Tribune will still be here. But I do care about the Sun-Times, I’ve always liked the paper more at times than the Tribune. I would be very sad to see the Sun-Times go belly up.

- Wumpus - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 1:12 pm:
They should reduce all the extended network of the Red Eye and are they the providers of the Herald?

- Ghost - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 2:02 pm:
Kiyoshi I agree, particuraly on the reactionary side. I always wondered if this lack of inovation is do to risk adverse leadership or inability to hire talent.

- Anon - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 2:42 pm:
The over/under on the Sun Times is one year. The corporate reformers who took Conrad Black’s place have eliminated the possibility of raising equity through the capital markets — or debt for that matter. Where do they go for money? A bank? What possible prospects do they have to so much as break even? A resurgence in classified advertising?

The real issue it raises is for Sam Zell: if the Sun-Times can put out a paper (however bad the actual product) with 133 employees (currently) does the Tribune really needs all SIX HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX members of its editorial board and staff. I’m thinking that they could probably get by with maybe triple the Sun Times staff and still manage to fill the papers with re-printed stories from the LA Times.

The Sun Times is a terrible paper, but at least it has some original local reporting. How can 626 people put out a 4 page Metro section? Do we really need a 10,000 word thesis on the milk industry? How many reporters do they have who even turn in a single story in a given week?

I’m thinking there may be some room for improvement. Here’s hoping it starts at the top of the masthead.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/site/chi-newspaperemail,0,1803151.htmlstory

- Kiyoshi Martinez - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 3:12 pm:
Ghost: I think the problem is that newspapers and their corporate caretakers never saw themselves as a technology company. They always viewed themselves very narrowly because their business strategy had remained highly unchanged for so long and had weathered the storms of radio and TV quite well.

Radio and TV were totally different mediums, but didn’t change the way text was presented and published. When the Internet came along, it was thought of to mirror radio and TV as a different medium, not a different and more innovative way to publish. Instead, they focused on copy/paste shovelware that got them a presence but didn’t do anything new for revenue. As the publishing game shifted, they didn’t shift with it.

Additionally, they didn’t foresee that their paper couldn’t deliver the volume and depth of the Internet in terms of national, world, sports, etc. news. All that wire copy that might have made the paper worth getting was now elsewhere.

I don’t think it helped that newspapers had a model based on paid subscriptions, which directly contradicted the free model the Internet centered itself on. Add onto this a skeptic attitude about the Internet and an outright refusal to change and it created the perfect storm that’s here now.

I think this is clearly a leadership issue across the board. Meanwhile, all the talent and recruits they needed were heading to Silicon Valley, which boomed and now places them out of the price range of newspaper corporations to catch up.

I think that 10-15 years ago, newspapers could have made decisions and moves that could’ve made them bulletproof today. No one was thinking back then “hey, we could make money from this Internet thing,” let alone, “this will eat us alive.”

- Concerned Voter - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 4:03 pm:
The Sun-Times already lost me, except for Sundays. My local paper, the Herald News, is part of their newsgroup, so I get some of the same state and world news in there. Now, I don’t get all the news I get from the Sun-Times, but now that they want 75cents for it in the southwest suburbs, I’ll just get the Herald, read the Suntimes online, and of course, read thecapitalfaxblog.com

- NEWS FLASHER - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 4:08 pm:
Stayed pending appeal, but interesting none the less if the ruling stands.

By The Associated Press | Wednesday, January 09, 2008 | No comments posted.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. | The Blagojevich administration must release the subpoenas it has gotten from federal prosecutors who are investigating possible corruption, a judge has ruled.

The U.S. attorney in Chicago is looking into possible misconduct in the way Gov. Rod Blagojevich awards state jobs and contracts. He has issued subpoenas requiring the administration to turn over various documents.

Blagojevich has refused to show the subpoenas to reporters and government watchdog groups, so the Better Government Association sued.

Sangamon County Judge Patrick Kelley ruled Wednesday that the subpoenas must be released to the public.

But he stayed his order to let the governor appeal.

- Macbeth - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 4:26 pm:
After this week’s fiasco with Parade magazine, I suspect it’s clear that print dailies have reached the end of their usefulness.

I suspect — and I hope — print *magazines* continue to flourish. I think there’s a market there — and I’m certainly an avid magazine reader — but I can’t remember the last time I opened a newspaper.

Oh wait. I do remember. It was the Sunday New York Times. I remember turning the ‘Arts and Leisure’ section on the Sunday of the Soprano’s finale. There was interview with David Chase there — and I was interested to find out what he said about the episode that would air in a few hours.

But — yeah — news? Nah. I can get all the news I want 24/7 via the internet. And, as I say, the Parade mess is proof of why newspapers are dead.

Okay, yeah — Parade’s not *news*. I got it. And Parade doesn’t have any affiliation with the newspapers that carry it. I got that, too.

But I — and many others — wonder what the point is of news that isn’t dynamic? And Parade certainly had the *option* to be dynamic — and pull the issue — but they went ahead and printed it.

I’m still somewhat sickened by that cover story — and the choices that led to its being published and not pulled.

And yeah — I understand that parade is a magazine — and I said about that I *like* magazines. I do — but I would have never subscribed to Parade in the first place.

(I stopped reading the Trib long ago — probably when that awful Bob Greene was still writing his dismal columns. He alone was responsible for my refusing to pick another hard-copy Trib for the rest of my life.)

- In the business - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 4:33 pm:
To those who say bloggers are the future of our news — I just have to wonder where you will all get your news from. Almost everything you write (maybe 75 percent of everything on this page) is spun off of real newspapers and real reporters reporting. Get over yourself.
Secondly, the Sun-Times will never be the same because of shifts in advertising, not because of shifts in the attitudes of readers or respect for the media. If you knew anything about the economic dynamics at play here, you would see that.
Thirdly, a newspaper can’t survive on Web ad revenue alone. A full-page ad in a decent size paper can go for $2,000 a day. A web ad would go for a couple hundred dollars. You wouldn’t have the money to pay the reporters to bring the news that brings the people.
Fourthly, community reporting from regular citizens is a flawed concept that has repeatedly failed already. People don’t go to the newspaper for gossip, they go for solid reporting they can more or less trust.
And finally, the end result is there are simply too many papers in the Chicago market (SouthtownStar, Joliet, Rockford, Herald, the weeklies and Elgin and Aurora dailies, the northwest Indiana rags, the Northwest Herald) for the amount of ad revenue that is out there these days. The ST will shut some of their burb papers down and this will start a trend toward consolidation across the board.
Look — every paper is simply holding out as long as it can before folding, (with the Trib able to hold out the most), and in the end we will have fewer newspapers sustaining on a workable margin of paper and web ads. Whether this means the ST or Herald or whatever goes dead remains to be seen.
As for online — the newspapers will dominate it in a few years time. Reliable Independent bloggers that are living off that meager ad revenue will become a thing of the past and hitch on to newspapers who will eventually corner that market.

- Macbeth - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 4:43 pm:
Bloggers are *not* the future of news.

Bloggers are a bunch of self-referential naval-gazers who care more about fleeting internet fame (and “link backs”) than journalism and careful writing.

There. I said it.

- Kiyoshi Martinez - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 4:59 pm:
To those who say bloggers are the future of our news — I just have to wonder where you will all get your news from. Almost everything you write (maybe 75 percent of everything on this page) is spun off of real newspapers and real reporters reporting. Get over yourself.

I agree that most bloggers don’t produce original content or reporting. However, if you job description of the reporter from what they’re doing now for newspapers and transform them into bloggers that do original reporting, pay them a base rate tied to either posts/time period with traffic bonus incentives, I think that’ll be a model that’s financially sound and can be easily applied.

Thirdly, a newspaper can’t survive on Web ad revenue alone. A full-page ad in a decent size paper can go for $2,000 a day. A web ad would go for a couple hundred dollars. You wouldn’t have the money to pay the reporters to bring the news that brings the people.

This is because newspapers are selling web ads on clicks or impressions. They’re not selling them as display and visibility. Just because a newspaper has a certain circulation, that doesn’t mean that everyone will see the ad, let alone “click” on it. The sales philosophy needs to change for online ads. Of course, this also means pages views has to increase substantially, which means that the volume has to increase and also more “long tail” content needs to be provided.

Fourthly, community reporting from regular citizens is a flawed concept that has repeatedly failed already. People don’t go to the newspaper for gossip, they go for solid reporting they can more or less trust.

A site/paper run by citizen media alone will be a failure, however, a hybrid of both citizen contributions directly alongside in-house content creates a better product that could actually work. The problem right now is that the STMG and Tribune rebrands the citizen content and separates it entirely from their ivory-tower reporting (google “neighborhoodcicle.com” or “triblocal”). Why create two products when you could have a single, stronger product?

Citizen contributions aren’t just gossip, it’s free content to fill the pages and sell advertising around. It creates reader interaction and your contributors turn into your biggest word-of-mouth advertisers for the paper. Readers want to be involved, you just have to give them the platform to interact and participate.

Or you could be like the Sun-Times and not even allow readers to comment on your stories — a perfect example of not “getting it.”

- jaundiced eye - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 5:07 pm:
Macbeth, the same could be said of any number of newspaper columnists (equally distributed between the ST and the Tribune). Careful writing? I can’t find it. Fact checking and copy editing? nonexistent. Navel gazers like Sneed, Steinberg, Roeper, Schmich and Zorn are inexcusable and wastes of money, time and oxygen. The list is greater than just these few, unfortunately.

- In the business - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 5:20 pm:
Kiyoshi Martinez –
I agree what you say makes an amount of sense. However, tying a reporters pay to their click counts is only going to increase the amount of inaccurate reporting and create a mass dive for the lowest common denominator. Check out the most hit stories in papers. They are either the most promoted, or the most irrelevant — murders, funny crime stories, etc. Such a push would leave those searching for real, relevant news with slim pickings because those people don’t amount to enough “clicks.” Plus, how are you going to pay reporters for all the time they need to report and write major projects when they only amount the same number of clicks in, say, one week that someone reporting on beheaded husbands or making things up gets in one hour.
It sounds like a reasonable plan until you think about the world of news it will lead to.
Secondly — you are wrong on the citizen thing. If people want to contribute their own “stories” and “content” so much, how come every job ad on Craigslist is begging for people to write things for $5 a pop on their woefully undervisited sites. Comment sections are fine and a good addition if handled correctly. But that is not “content.”

- JakeCP - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 5:41 pm:
I think that the Chicago Sun-Times might last for a couple of more years. I can’t really imagine seeing them just shut down completley. Do I care? NO because this was the same idiotic newspaper that endorsed Rod Blagojevich and Todd Stroger.

Oh and being a podcast host and I guess you can say online blogger, I have to agree with most of the people on here which is that bloggers are the future of our news. I get most of my news from News broadcasts and newspapers.

- plutocrat03 - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 5:55 pm:
I certainly would not predict whether the S/T will be alive in a few years. Too many things can change. It is the job of the management team to formulate a strategy and make it work.

All businesses must serve a customer base well enough to make the customer willing to part with their money. Some times you have to change your business model in order to thrive. Unfortunately that takes $$. The mismanagement and pillaging during the Black years cannot have helped with the state of their reserves. I hope they have enough time to be able to sell their new vision the public. Otherwise the company will fail like so many that have gone before it.

One can wish that governments would have to go through this kind of crucible from time to time. Any organization whether public or private becomes sluggish over time and must renew itself to stay relevant. After the crisis is over the resulting organization is leaner and more customer focused. We could certainly use that in the Illinois government.

- Frank Booth - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 6:02 pm:
Kiyoshi,
using your theory on pay-per-hit, the blogger responsible for posting the CPS school lunch menu might be the highest paid news blogger in the industry.

Is that the future of journalism?

- In the business - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 6:40 pm:
JackCP –
Does this statement seem a little contradictory and at the same proving the opposite point (the right point)? — “Oh and being a podcast host and I guess you can say online blogger, I have to agree with most of the people on here which is that bloggers are the future of our news. I get most of my news from News broadcasts and newspapers.”

- Annonymous - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 7:50 pm:
I like Michael Sneed’s column. She has a nice mix of gossip and “news” that seldom harms anyone and is therefore a nice diversion in a major paper. Kup’s the only other columnist I can think of who was as successful, and I still miss him and his work terribly.

- jaundiced eye - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 8:17 pm:
Most of Sneed’s copy (other than what Ed and Anne Burke feed her) is 2nd hand and 2 days late from other papers, etc. Kup, God rest his soul, was not that far removed from the columnist in the movie “Sweet Smell of Success.”
The bulk of dialogue on this post has veered from the assigned topic. What is the life expectancy of the ST? Under-capitalized, under-staffed, low ad sales, wrong readership demographics (by and large)plus a changing world. I give them less than 1 year.

- Kiyoshi Martinez - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 9:17 pm:
In the Business: I see two classes of reporters emerging. One class, the minority at a paper, will be the longer-form, analysis-based, investigative journalist who will work on projects that require depth and aren’t quick turn around articles. The other class, which will comprise of the majority, will be probably “permalancers” that are glorified freelances paid per post, given mobile journalism kits (aka, “mojos” with digital cameras/camcorders, laptops, EV-DO cards) that report from the field. They get a base salary, but their bonus will probably come from traffic generated. I don’t think you can have your entire staff be fully one or the other.

Will this “cheapen” journalism, the industry, etc.? Yeah, probably. But remember that news is now a consumer driven product and journalists are put in the unfortunate position to respond to that demand. I don’t know that the number of errors will go up, but I think that ideally you’ll have an editor or two overseeing the flock and making edits or updating with more information, backlinking to prior coverage, etc.

I don’t think this is a perfect system, or one that I think is ideal by any means. I just think it’s economical and makes logical sense, and that’s usually the approach that news companies seem to take when making these decisions. Journalists future and current need to be thinking about what’s next and how they’re going to have to do to stay employed. And let’s be honest: if you’re not going to do it, a publisher will find a dozen recent graduates who are flooding the market each year who will gladly take ANY job.

To your second point about citizen contributions, I’m going to point you to the group of newspapers I work for at 22nd Century Media. All of our sites allow readers to sign up for an account, submit their own stories, photos and videos that appear instantly online. A lot of this content that we receive we republish in our printed products. These aren’t paid contributors to random websites. These are real people submitting news they find relevant to the paper and being involved in helping shape the coverage of their own hometown.

Now, you can argue that they don’t know the inverted pyramid and aren’t professionally trained, etc. Fine. But that’s not the point. The point is that if given the option to be included, some will participate. And creating that opportunity from a technical standpoint isn’t that hard. Technology isn’t the barrier here, the philosophical mindset of the old guard is.

And this is just at a hyperlocal, south suburban level. Imagine if the CST or the Tribune opened the floodgates for real submissions. Sure, you’d get a lot of not-so-amazing content, but you’d be getting free content and some of it might make the cut. And any of it would be better than running day-old wire copy.

I keep hearing from newspapers how they want to reflect the community they cover, engage the citizens and have a conversation. Yet, I rarely see anyone put their money where their mouth is. Why is that? What do newspapers have to lose? More readers? More revenue? More reporters?

Frank Booth: I suspect you intended your comment to be a bit snarky, but you bring up a great point.

Stuff like lunch menus should be included in the newsstream/blog that a newspaper site should offer and also part of their site’s information resources. Ideally, they’d have all of this data in a database set to post it automatically each day, so no need for a reporter to blog it. :)

And this brings up another area that newspapers need to rapidly move into before they once again lose more potential traffic — local information.

Newspaper sites shouldn’t just be about news. They also need to provide the “long-tail” resources of relevant information to their readership that can be accessed again and again. It’s relatively cheap to do, can stay up with little or no updating and is almost completely automated.

It’s almost a no-brainer: hire a few database programmers, brainstorm a list of information to provide on the site, make an interface that’s user-friendly and intuitive, make it search engine optimized and hire a bunch of temporary data-entry clerks to put the information in there when you need to update it. It’s a small initial investment that will provide long-term traffic returns and increases you page views that you can use to sell advertising.

Newspaper websites aren’t just about news anymore, it’s about being a trusted source that offers information utility. If newspapers don’t get with the program soon, they’ll again be beat by Google and Yahoo!, both of which are beginning to tap into the local search market. If I find what I need on Google instead of your site — or if I think to turn to Google for local information before I goto your site — then you’ve lost me as a reader.

Newspapers shouldn’t give up the one place they have a shot to make an impact online. Yet, some part of me knows they’ll give up and just outsource all of that to another tech company. And it’s that kind of mentality that continues to marginalize them and means more newsroom employees have to lose their jobs.

And by the way, none of what I’m saying is a new idea or even all that original. It’s just repeating what’s been discussed, written and blogged elsewhere before by people much smarter than me who I happened to pay attention to in my spare time. If I know this, there’s no reason why corporate executives getting paid six or seven figures each year whose job it is to run newspaper companies can’t figure this stuff out and actually make it work. Honestly, what’s their excuse?

- mjk - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 9:22 pm:
Times have changed. The SunTimes is hardly barely an asset to the community. The columnists are generally weak, show a bias which generates little support, and the paper does very little to justify its contiued existence. In short, Chicago won’t miss the Times. Too bad, the town could use 2 good papers.

- greengirl - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 9:57 pm:
Returning to the city after college some years ago (but not THAT many), I recall the Chicago Sun-Times running stories that were different, interesting, and local. Stories I didn’t see in other papers. Stories that shed light on the city (no capital “c”) in which we live. I don’t know if the hard copy version of the Sun-Times will last much longer. Perhaps it will one of the first to go. No printed newspaper wants to be the first. Maybe the Sun-Times’ parent company should have been more forward-looking, or diversified. Who knows. I’m not sentimental as a rule, but I do like picking up a paper and feeling the newsprint as I turn the pages. It’s a different experience from electronic information. The Sun-Times, alas, has de-volved and I don’t feel the way I used to.

- Annonymous - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 9:59 pm:
Jaundiced Eye, I think you’re being awfully hard on Kup. I remember him as always being a gentleman.

Back to the topic, however, I think the Suntimes is in fact struggling, but am hoping that whatever Zell does with the Tribune will challenge them into improving as well so that we can continue to have two major papers in our area.

Believe it or not, most babyboomers actually enjoy reading the all of the papers each morning over a cup of coffee. And, with many beginning to retire, I think they’ll have more time to do so at an even more leisurely pace.

I just hope that both the Tribune and Suntimes will do something to provide us with more content that interests us. I can’t imagine all of us wanting to be glued to a TV, or hooked up to some technology that shrieks at us each time a story comes in.

And heaven only knows that while we enjoy our neighbors and the “hyperlocal” stuff, we’ve gone to enough school plays and local sporting events while our children were younger to crave other forms of entertainment.

There’s an entire demographic still out there that I think most of the techno-oriented folks are forgetting about. And they, too, have money to spend.

- Annonymous - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 10:16 pm:
I should add, too, that “technology-oriented advertising” fails miserably with the “older” crowd. Most of us find it insulting to our senses to be bombarded 24 hours a day by flashing lights, pop-ups, jumping smiley faces, etc., and actually go out of our way to ignore it.

I couldn’t even tell you who advertises on either the Trib’s, ST’s, or any hyper-local newspaper’s websites.

And I take pride in that.

- Yellow Dog Democrat - Wednesday, Jan 9, 08 @ 11:29 pm:
Define “still be alive”?

Does Terry Schiavo count?

Pingback Sun-Times’ hard times at A Chicago Blog - Thursday, Jan 10, 08 @ 6:41 am:
[…] There’s a good thread over at CapitolFax about whether or not the Sun-Times is going under. I think the answer is a definite … maybe. But I have a plan that could divert their disaster: give the paper away for free. The Tribune’s RedEye is cleaning up the free paper market and it’s a joke of a newspaper. A free Sun-Times would be a no brainer for most commuters. You at least get a few good columns and some real news along with your sudoku, right? Just a suggestion. […]

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