...is now smaller than the copies of GRIT kids used to hawk door-to-door back in the day.
The paper itself is a shell (from the Illinois Times):
SJ-R cuts sports editorThe offices, a ghost-town.
Adams laid off last week
By Bruce Rushton
State Journal-Register sports editor Todd Adams was laid off last Friday in what one source says was an economic move.
Adams’ departure came two days after SJ-R newsroom employees, plus editorial employees at the Peoria Journal Register and Rockford Register Star, were offered buyouts. Workers have until today to sign up for buyouts...
Don't let the door hit you
SJ-R employees offered buyouts
By Bruce Rushton
Newsroom employees at the State Journal-Register are being offered buyouts, with the prospect of layoffs on the horizon.
The buyout offer from GateHouse Media, the paper’s corporate owner, was made Wednesday, with employees told they have until Monday to volunteer to be let go. Under a newsroom collective bargaining agreement, employees who accept a buyout would be paid one week of pay for every year of service, to a maximum of 15 weeks...
There aren’t many reporters left to cut. City hall reporter Crystal Thomas is leaving the paper on Friday to cover the Missouri legislature for the Kansas City Star. Her departure will leave the SJ-R with five news reporters, including Doug Finke, Dean Olsen, Brendan Moore, Bernard Schoenberg and Steven Spearie. Fifteen writers, editors and photographers have left the paper in the last six years without being replaced...
As the stalwart Big Box advertisers of the days of yore evaporated and Facebook and Amazon gobbled up the rest, the paper has become more and more dependent on exactly the same source of revenue as every scrappy little blogger and independent podcaster: listener or reader support. In the case of the newspaper, this means paid subscriptions.
And as keeping paid subscribers down here in Trump-country happy has become more and more directly tied to keeping the doors open and the lights on at the State Journal-Register, it will come as no surprise that on the op-ed page, the Michael Gersons and the Jennifer Rubins have been gradually phased out in favor of explicitly red-meat lunatics like Hugh Hewitt, Ann Coulter and Marc Thiessen.
You see, out here in the real world. it's no big secret what sort of toxic drivel Trump-loving Republican really want to read when they crack open their paper in the morning.
And however objectively corrosive it might be to our democracy, to keep from going under, the Illinois state capitol's daily paper is gonna keep feeding it to them until they board the place up and auction off the artwork and office equipment.
Update: Just in case you thought I was exaggerating or playing tricksie Photoshop games with you, here is this morning's State Journal-Register. It is, by my rough, estimating-the-weight-of-a-bag-of-weed-while-in-a-very-big-hurry judgement to be even lighter and smaller than the twig of a paper that landed on my steps yesterday.
And as keeping paid subscribers down here in Trump-country happy has become more and more directly tied to keeping the doors open and the lights on at the State Journal-Register, it will come as no surprise that on the op-ed page, the Michael Gersons and the Jennifer Rubins have been gradually phased out in favor of explicitly red-meat lunatics like Hugh Hewitt, Ann Coulter and Marc Thiessen.
You see, out here in the real world. it's no big secret what sort of toxic drivel Trump-loving Republican really want to read when they crack open their paper in the morning.
And however objectively corrosive it might be to our democracy, to keep from going under, the Illinois state capitol's daily paper is gonna keep feeding it to them until they board the place up and auction off the artwork and office equipment.
Update: Just in case you thought I was exaggerating or playing tricksie Photoshop games with you, here is this morning's State Journal-Register. It is, by my rough, estimating-the-weight-of-a-bag-of-weed-while-in-a-very-big-hurry judgement to be even lighter and smaller than the twig of a paper that landed on my steps yesterday.
Behold, a Tip Jar!
5 comments:
I have a pet theory that some of these right wing trolls don't charge for their material. That it's all part of the "paid for from above" world of right wing poltics.
Sounds to me as if the real problem is that younger people and more liberal minded people have stopped subscribing to newspapers. Personally, I stopped subscribing to my "local" daily, The Washington ComPost, more than a decade ago because nearly the entire editorial board was made up of neocons and I was a fierce opponent of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Mainstream "news" organizations failed the country miserably during the Bush years, creating the conditions whereby many people stopped trusting them. This is just the end result.
With E paper competition and all.
Local paper editors and managers want to salaries. They combine several local papers into one.
Problem is, once they went down the road to be both sides or endorsing the Steve Kings of the world.
The folks that read the paper began to find the partisan slanting a bit too much.
When they can read any paper on line they wish.
Sinclair and Borstein will tell them what they need to know on the Tele.
I used to read the San Francisco Chronicle quite a bit, mostly for the writing as the news was nothing special. I thought Steve Rubenstein was good (apparently he still is) and a few others who I enjoyed reading on the bus to work.
I was in Target the other day and happened to see a copy of that day's Chronicle, and had to stop and examine it to make sure it wasn't a joke of some kind.
It's tiny.
I remember when the East Bay Express changed over to the tabloid size all of the other weeklies were using, and before that it was smaller and shaped differently, and that's what the Chronicle looks like now, only without the comics by Lynda Barry and Matt Groening the Express used to feature.
-Doug in Oakland
In my opinion.
The day whebn the papers began to eliminate the "labor" section they used to produce is the day they began their road trip away from the masses of people that subscribed.
Companies hiring, layoffs, and a lot of news to help people seeking employment.
Not any more.
The local paper here I take has downsized (for a lot of reasons).
They will endorse GOP candidates just like Trump more than panders to his white supremacist base.
The paper just announced it will be cutting out other "NEWS" to make space for more Business news. Nothing that helps working people. Nothing that will help people invest (except irresponsibly).
Just Business gossip, nothing more. Like that Kraimer investment show ringing his bell.
While they struggle to wonder why working people aren't interested in subscribing to this important entertainment provided by business advertising.
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