Another newspaper in trouble?

[John Litweiler]

I got quite a shock in South Bend a month ago. For the first time in many years I bought a Monday morning South Bend Tribune. The pages are all smaller than they used to be. Section 1, news, was just 8 pages; just 5 of those pages had advertising and only 1 had as much as 1/2 page of ads - the rest were 1/3 of a page or less. The other two sections comprised a grand total of 16 pp., including a grand total of less than 1/3 of a page of display ads. Most impressive was the 4 pp. classified-ad section. The most impressive classified ads were the calls for an Executive Editor and Digital Sales Executive of the South Bend Tribune. It looked pathetic.

What a stunning reversal. I grew up with the South Bend Tribune, which was sold throughout a radius of at least 40-50 miles in all directions from SB, in IN and MI (probably still is). It was a big, fat paper full of local and national news, more news than the two Fort Wayne dailies, as much as the 2 or 3 Indianapolis papers (Indy pop. was 4-5 times that of SB). As recently as 20 or so years ago the SB Tribune was still outstanding - incidentally, its jazz critic, Mark Stryker, was far superior to the Chicago Tribune's jazz hack. (I used to work for a newspaper clipping service in the 1970s and saw that, for quantity of news and quality of reporting, the SB Trib was superior to almost all other newspapers from similar-sized cities and far superior to the Gannet papers in San Antonio and Rochester, as well as some other big-city papers.)

Michael Collins wrote a novel, The Keepers Of Truth, about a the Daily Truth, a dying newspaper in a dying midwestern city. Collins attended Notre Dame and must have seen the Elkhart Truth in its decline. Grim stuff.

Ah, obsolescence.

What happened? Did circulation go to hell, did the www. grab all the readers, why a minimum of advertising?

[alocispepraluger102]

this world is now a 30 second ad/pr-driven 10 second clip picture driven society. there is no place or demand for serious depth, perspective, objectivity, and rational thinking.

if we forego the disciplines and rewards our print format requires of us for sound bit analysis, 250 word 'articles' and 'perspective', the consequences will be dire to our society, if not civilization.

[Scott Dolan]

People figured out they could get their news for free online. All newspapers are in trouble, not just that one. And magazines won't be far behind.