Future of newspaper comics
Tank
aemeijers
> It will be interesting to see if comic strips go along for this ride.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/64xflh
Gannett is down-sizing and cutting back their papers pretty much
chain-wide. The local rag here is closing their print plant, and will be
printed at a sister paper 50 miles away. (So much for getting a paper on
snowy days...)
I've read multiple papers a day since before kindergarten. I'm 50-some,
too damn old to change now. But I fear that there will be a lot fewer
daily papers, when and if we all make it to the other side of the
current economic meltdown. And those that survive will be a lot tinier,
with a lot fewer comics. (Still plenty of sports and celebrity puff
pieces, and ads for the newspaper, of course, though.) And maybe a page
or two of, you know, actual NEWS, somewhere in there?
The leaked Detroit plan, BTW, was to cut back home delivery to 2-3 days
a week, and have 'summary sheet' style papers at newstands the other
days? Tabloid size? Single section? Who knows- odds are, they will only
deliver to metro Detroit, and kiss off the outstate areas. Newstand
delivery around here for the Detroit papers has been getting spottier by
the year.
I wonder what they expect the people without broadband, or even dialup,
at home, to read? Still a lot of those folks out there.
--
aem sends, disgusted with the whole thing....
Sanjeev
> It will be interesting to see if comic strips go along for this ride.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/64xflh
Hi Tank..apart from what are stated from the article, i.e. changes are
designed to better meet advertiser and reader needs in an era in which
digital delivery is revolutionizing how people get information, focus
on publishing online, reducing the number of publication days and
focus on more robust and more engaging digital delivery methods, Alan
Gardener from The Daily Cartoonist says there are also 3 trends that
will impact the future of newspaper comics, which are:
1. Reducing the paper size.
Reducing the size for logistics reason will definitely impact the
funny pages as it'll be illegible to the older generation that still
buys newspapers. That being said, the funny pages will have to be
dropped.
2. The emergence of more free dailies in the US.
Free dailies are typically tabloid size and work better for the
younger urban demographic who read the papers while commuting on mass
transit. Free dailies tend to have less syndicated material and
concentrate on local content.
3. The internet is going to kill off “bloated newspapers.”
The reason is simple: In an online world, there are too many bloated
newspapers. A hot story of any sort might have 1,000 to 2,000 links
from 1,000 to 2,000 news outlets(Google News search). More often than
not, many of the 1,000 to 2,000 stories are the same Associated Press
or Reuters reports.
As more newspapers make the mistake of eliminating reporting jobs,
they fall into the pit of redundancy with nothing special to offer.
The only papers or news organizations that can expect to survive will
be those with lots of original content available only at their
individual sites.
All of these make an assumption that publishers and editors will
understand the value of comics and want to keep them in their paper.
As the older generation dies out and is replaced by a younger
generation who is more likely to peruse through YouTube than they are
a comics page, print comics will diminish and disappear entirely.
Joseph Nebus
>I've read multiple papers a day since before kindergarten. I'm 50-some,
>too damn old to change now.
I had thought that myself, and I'm only in my thirties, but
the end of my regular newspaper habit just sort of drifted into being
a fact. Some of it was moving to places with worse comics pages, some
of it was reading my major news stuffs online, some of it was just not
finding the newspapers that interesting in themselves.
One might say I don't find the time for them anymore, but that's
a symptom, I think: the time would be available if I wanted particularly
to read the paper.
> But I fear that there will be a lot fewer
>daily papers, when and if we all make it to the other side of the
>current economic meltdown. And those that survive will be a lot tinier,
>with a lot fewer comics. (Still plenty of sports and celebrity puff
>pieces, and ads for the newspaper, of course, though.) And maybe a page
>or two of, you know, actual NEWS, somewhere in there?
Unfortunately, I suspect the economics of downsizing/melting
down are going to encourage the bad habits. A newspaper can't beat
online, radio, and TV news for breaking stories for speed, and the
local newspaper can't beat the big guns for quality of coverage of
major stories. What the average newspaper needs to provide is stuff
that's interesting that can't be read elsewhere, which means, really,
the original content or the local content that you can't just pull
off the Associated Press feed because nobody outside Neptune, New
Jersey, is all that interested in the goings-on in Neptune.
But that means talent pools and staff to find things going on
there and to make them interesting to that locality, and that costs.
It's cheaper to get news feeds and syndication packages and produce a
very low-cost newspaper, with maybe a desperately underpaid stringer
transcribing the petty squabbles at the town council meeting. That's
profitable, for a while, but it doesn't give the buyer a compelling
purchase.
I don't think a slenderer newspaper is necessarily a bad thing,
except that at 50 or 75 cents a copy you do want some heft to it. But
I do suppose the 'paper' part is going to end up being a vestigial
element, or a loss leader to get people to the web site, and the actual
newspaper become a news-producing element which happens to publish in
whatever medium is convenient.
Where this leaves comics is where they always had been, ways to
get people to a particular distribution site. A good newspaper will
probably keep using them in that way, although it's hard to see why
bother picking strips from the two dozen the Star-Ledger's sorry web
site bothers to link to instead of going right to the syndicates' sites
and reading the strips from pretty near the source.
Say, have local newspaper web sites done anything to encourage
local web-cartoonists to become their online cartoonists? They work
cheap and might have to make the elaborate video game parodies a bit
more accessible, but they might have mutually supportive needs after
all.
--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael G. Koerner
> Tank wrote:
>> It will be interesting to see if comic strips go along for this ride.
>>
>> http://tinyurl.com/64xflh
>
> Gannett is down-sizing and cutting back their papers pretty much
> chain-wide. The local rag here is closing their print plant, and will be
> printed at a sister paper 50 miles away. (So much for getting a paper on
> snowy days...)
They did that here in NE Wisconsin several years ago, too. After they bought
the papers in Appleton, Oshkosh, Manitowoc and a few others, in addition to
the Green Bay Press-Gazette (which they had already owned for many years),
they built a consolidated printing plant on Appleton's NE side (right next to
the US 41/WI 441 interchange) and moved the printing for all of those NE
Wisconsin papers there.
I really miss the Appleton Post-Crescent when it was owned by the Post
Corporation.
<sigh...>
The only comics shrinkage that I have seen so far is the size of the Sunday
sections and the actual print size in the dailies, matching the smaller page
size of the overall papers.
> I've read multiple papers a day since before kindergarten. I'm 50-some,
> too damn old to change now. But I fear that there will be a lot fewer
> daily papers, when and if we all make it to the other side of the
> current economic meltdown. And those that survive will be a lot tinier,
> with a lot fewer comics. (Still plenty of sports and celebrity puff
> pieces, and ads for the newspaper, of course, though.) And maybe a page
> or two of, you know, actual NEWS, somewhere in there?
>
> The leaked Detroit plan, BTW, was to cut back home delivery to 2-3 days
> a week, and have 'summary sheet' style papers at newstands the other
> days? Tabloid size? Single section? Who knows- odds are, they will only
> deliver to metro Detroit, and kiss off the outstate areas. Newstand
> delivery around here for the Detroit papers has been getting spottier by
> the year.
>
> I wonder what they expect the people without broadband, or even dialup,
> at home, to read? Still a lot of those folks out there.
> --
> aem sends, disgusted with the whole thing....
--
___________________________________________ ____ _______________
Regards, | |\ ____
| | | | |\
Michael G. Koerner May they | | | | | | rise again!
Appleton, Wisconsin USA | | | | | |
___________________________________________ | | | | | | _______________
Pat O'Neill
> Unfortunately, I suspect the economics of downsizing/melting
> down are going to encourage the bad habits. A newspaper can't beat
> online, radio, and TV news for breaking stories for speed, and the
> local newspaper can't beat the big guns for quality of coverage of
> major stories. What the average newspaper needs to provide is stuff
> that's interesting that can't be read elsewhere, which means, really,
> the original content or the local content that you can't just pull
> off the Associated Press feed because nobody outside Neptune, New
> Jersey, is all that interested in the goings-on in Neptune.
My wife wonders why I bother with reading the local county-based
paper, The Delaware County Times, when I already the Philly Inky. The
reasons are clear: The Inky gives me pretty good national and
metropolitan area coverage, but the amount of time and space it gives
to Delco-specific news is limited...usually limited to major crime
stories or political corruption (and not always all of those). OTOH,
the Times almost always leads with local coverage. Without the Times,
I'd have to attend every township meeting and every school board
meeting to know what's going on.
> Where this leaves comics is where they always had been, ways to
> get people to a particular distribution site. A good newspaper will
> probably keep using them in that way, although it's hard to see why
> bother picking strips from the two dozen the Star-Ledger's sorry web
> site bothers to link to instead of going right to the syndicates' sites
> and reading the strips from pretty near the source.
Does anyone still have a paper where the Sunday edition comes wrapped
inside the comics...instead of the comics being buried inside, lost
among the two dozen ad inserts? I remember going to the newsstand in
NY on Sundays and being able to pick out the News, the Journal-
American, the Herald-Trib, and the local SI Advance by their comics
sections: The News led with Dick Tracy, the Journal with Popeye, the
Trib with Peanuts, and the Advance (if I recall properly) with Pogo.
This made each paper unique and identifiable.
Today, the Post and the News inevitably just have variations of the
same front-page; the Times is just the same as it's always been--a bit
more color now, thanks to digital photography and printing.
Why did papers give up one of their great marketing tools this way?
sanford sklansky
"aemeijers" <aeme...@att.net> wrote in message
news:1%O1l.208399$Mh5.1...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
I wonder how many people acutally have some type of internet connection.
Even if you don't have a computer libraries have computers. I don't know
what the answer is to make newspapers more viable. After all when you can
can news at an instant, why wait until the morning paper comes. I still
like reading the sports section while eating my cereral and reading the
comics and doing the crossword at lunch. Some business usually gets hurt
when there are new innovations. At this point newspapers are getting hurt
by the net. I am not sure if having such big companies like the Tribune is
good or not for the newspaper industry. Would things be any better each
paper was under individual ownership. I wonder how many papers are under
individual ownership.
Dann
news:1%O1l.208399$Mh5.1...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net.
> Tank wrote:
>> It will be interesting to see if comic strips go along for this ride.
>>
>> http://tinyurl.com/64xflh
>
> Gannett is down-sizing and cutting back their papers pretty much
> chain-wide. The local rag here is closing their print plant, and will
> be printed at a sister paper 50 miles away. (So much for getting a
> paper on snowy days...)
Beware the future. The CitPat is being printed in Ann Arbor. And now
they are moving a bunch of the reporting/support staff to Grand Rapids.
About the only thing they have left of consequence in town is the
building.
> The leaked Detroit plan, BTW, was to cut back home delivery to 2-3
> days a week, and have 'summary sheet' style papers at newstands the
> other days? Tabloid size? Single section? Who knows- odds are, they
> will only deliver to metro Detroit, and kiss off the outstate areas.
> Newstand delivery around here for the Detroit papers has been getting
> spottier by the year.
Any chance that they would raise rates on the folks in Detroit?
I didn't think so.
--
Regards,
Dann
blogging at http://web.newsguy.com/dainbramage/blog.htm
Freedom works; each and every time it is tried.
racs...@gmail.com
<sanfordsklan...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Some business usually gets hurt
> when there are new innovations. At this point newspapers are getting hurt
> by the net.
Newspapers are not being hurt by the net so much as they are being
hurt by front office idiocy, inspired by the net.
Imagine that you manage a McDonalds. Drive thrus have become a favored
method of getting lunch. So the owners, seeing that other fast food
places have long lines at their drive thrus, say to you "From now on,
we're giving the food away at the drive thru and selling it in the
restaurant. We're going to have a lot more people at OUR drive-thru
than Burger King or Wendy's will have at THEIR drive-thrus and we will
crush them!"
And you say, "But how will we pay for the food we're giving away?"
And the owner says, "Get with it, man! That's, like, such a 20th-
century, dead-beef concept! We'll build the numbers now and worry
about that later!"
And you say, "Um ... okay."
And then he says, "Oh, but, by the way, if our revenues go down in the
restaurant, you're fired. In fact, we need you to boost them by five
percent this quarter. Don't screw this up or you're out."
And you say, " ... oh, shit ... "
>I am not sure if having such big companies like the Tribune is
> good or not for the newspaper industry. Would things be any better each
> paper was under individual ownership. I wonder how many papers are under
> individual ownership.
Individual owners can make intelligent decisions based on the taste
and needs of their own markets. But there is an extent to which the
above scenario becomes so dominant that you can only buck it to a
certain extent. And, of course, the overall depression isn't helping
anyone -- newspapers or television or anybody in the media. Individual
newspapers CAN offer local content that isn't available anywhere else.
But that only works for very small papers in side markets -- it's
niche publishing based on geography, and no different than any other
kind of niche publishing in that you have to have a niche that wants
the information and you have to persuade them, and advertisers, that
its worth what you need to receive in return in order to stay in
business.
It can be done. It is being done. But, again, the actions of the
corporate papers has impact throughout the industry.
The issue right now, if you will turn to the stock listings (ooops --
we dropped those -- look it up on-line), is that some small child
watched those big Wall Street-driven papers giving away hamburgers at
the drive-thru, realized the Emperor was naked and began to sell off
his stock. When I left my last chain employer two years ago, I sold my
stock at $28 a share. As I write this, the stock is selling for 45
cents a share. The number of small children pointing at the Emperor
has grown.
But the geniuses are still giving away the burgers, only now they're
using cheaper meat and smaller patties and dropping french fries from
the menu and leaving the toys out of the Happy Meals and hoping the
customers won't notice.
Mike Peterson
Restaurant Metaphors, LLC
http://nellieblogs.blogspot.com
Tank
Nick Theodorakis
> Latest:http://tinyurl.com/54s84e
[From the link: Detroit papers drop home delivery to 3 days a week]
Honestly, that would make me drop my subscription (or maybe change it
to Sunday only). I like having my daily routine of looking at the
paper in the morning. Three days a week would just be irritating.
Nick
--
Nick Theodorakis
nick_the...@hotmail.com
contact form:
http://theodorakis.net/contact.html
Joseph Nebus
>On Dec 17, 9:40=A0am, Tank <Tank...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Latest:http://tinyurl.com/54s84e
>[From the link: Detroit papers drop home delivery to 3 days a week]
>Honestly, that would make me drop my subscription (or maybe change it
>to Sunday only). I like having my daily routine of looking at the
>paper in the morning. Three days a week would just be irritating.
I'm stuck on why Thursday and Friday as delivery days. Sunday
was such a given that I had assumed when talk about this started that
they meant to run Sunday papers and then three days during the week.
Friday's the natural second choice, if only for the weekend
events and movie reviews that go there. I'd have guessed the other
day of the week to be Monday or Wednesday given the relative thickness
of those papers.
--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Default User
> On Dec 17, 9:40 am, Tank <Tank...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Latest:http://tinyurl.com/54s84e
>
> [From the link: Detroit papers drop home delivery to 3 days a week]
>
> Honestly, that would make me drop my subscription (or maybe change it
> to Sunday only). I like having my daily routine of looking at the
> paper in the morning. Three days a week would just be irritating.
Currently, I'm signed up for three days a week of the Post-Dispatch. I
get the weekend package, plus Wednesday.
Brian
--
If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who
won't shut up.
-- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com)
Pat O'Neill
Thursday is traditionally the day when supermarkets run their big ads
and inserts for the coming week, so shoppers can begin on Friday.
Default User
> Thursday is traditionally the day when supermarkets run their big ads
> and inserts for the coming week, so shoppers can begin on Friday.
Not in St. Louis. Ads at one of the major chains run from Monday
through Sunday, and its ad insert is included in Monday's paper. The
ads are mailed to non-subscribers. The other two chains run abreviated
ads in Wednesday's paper (the day with the food section). The complete
version of those ads is mailed the previous Monday.
Tank
will look for what advantage they have over online sites, and play to
that strength. Comics strips and editorial cartoonists, for instance.
Hope springs eternal.
racs...@gmail.com
Don't get too hung up on this hope.
When it fails, the geniuses will blame it on something else. I promise
you -- I have dwelt among the geniuses.
Mike Peterson
http://nellieblogs.blogspot.com
Antonio E. Gonzalez
<racs...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Dec 16, 10:44 pm, "sanford sklansky"
><sanfordsklan...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> Some business usually gets hurt
>> when there are new innovations. At this point newspapers are getting hurt
>> by the net.
>
>Newspapers are not being hurt by the net so much as they are being
>hurt by front office idiocy, inspired by the net.
>
>Imagine that you manage a McDonalds. Drive thrus have become a favored
>method of getting lunch. So the owners, seeing that other fast food
>places have long lines at their drive thrus, say to you "From now on,
>we're giving the food away at the drive thru and selling it in the
>restaurant. We're going to have a lot more people at OUR drive-thru
>than Burger King or Wendy's will have at THEIR drive-thrus and we will
>crush them!"
>
>And you say, "But how will we pay for the food we're giving away?"
>
>And the owner says, "Get with it, man! That's, like, such a 20th-
>century, dead-beef concept! We'll build the numbers now and worry
>about that later!"
>
>And you say, "Um ... okay."
>
It's 2008, if a newspaper editor can't figure out how to use
banner/pop-up ads, then maybe they deserve to go out of business . . .
I still hope your analogy isn't about web content, because that's
one of the few ways newspapers have managed to stay competitive in
this internet age . . .
--
- ReFlex 76
- "Let's beat the terrorists with our most powerful weapon . . . hot
girl-on-girl action!"
- "The difference between young and old is the difference between
looking forward to your next birthday, and dreading it!"
- Jesus Christ - The original hippie!
<http://reflex76.blogspot.com/>
<http://www.blogger.com/profile/07245047157197572936>
Katana > Chain Saw > Baseball Bat > Hammer
Charlie Foxtrot
<racs...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Newspapers are not being hurt by the net so much as they are being
>hurt by front office idiocy, inspired by the net.
>
>Imagine that you manage a McDonalds. Drive thrus have become a favored
>method of getting lunch. So the owners, seeing that other fast food
>places have long lines at their drive thrus, say to you "From now on,
>we're giving the food away at the drive thru and selling it in the
>restaurant. We're going to have a lot more people at OUR drive-thru
>than Burger King or Wendy's will have at THEIR drive-thrus and we will
>crush them!"
>
>And you say, "But how will we pay for the food we're giving away?"
>
>And the owner says, "Get with it, man! That's, like, such a 20th-
>century, dead-beef concept! We'll build the numbers now and worry
>about that later!"
>
>And you say, "Um ... okay."
>
>And then he says, "Oh, but, by the way, if our revenues go down in the
>restaurant, you're fired. In fact, we need you to boost them by five
>percent this quarter. Don't screw this up or you're out."
>
>And you say, " ... oh, shit ... "
Excellent analogy, Mike!
I recently made a similar one that probably helped my "downsizing
dismissal."
I told my bosses that it was like we were a Corvette dealer and they
were telling me that if a customer came in, wanting to buy a Kia and
at a discount, I should ask him how much he wanted to pay for that Kia
and give him one of our Corvettes at that price.
Foxtrot
If you think you hate me from what I write here, check out my blog on my MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/bennettron
If you actually think I'm an okay guy, go ahead and add me as your friend if you are active at MySpace.
Mark Jackson
> On Dec 17, 9:40 am, Tank <Tank...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Latest:http://tinyurl.com/54s84e
>
> [From the link: Detroit papers drop home delivery to 3 days a week]
Things are moving so fast that there's a popular Twitter feed:
http://twitter.com/themediaisdying
--
Mark Jackson - http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~mjackson
Think how hard physics would be if particles could think.
- Murray Gell-Mann
Sanjeev
> Nick Theodorakis wrote:
> > On Dec 17, 9:40 am, Tank <Tank...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Latest:http://tinyurl.com/54s84e
>
> > [From the link: Detroit papers drop home delivery to 3 days a week]
>
> Things are moving so fast that there's a popular Twitter feed:
>
> http://twitter.com/themediaisdying
>
> --
> Think how hard physics would be if particles could think.
> - Murray Gell-Mann
Since we are on the topic of print vs digital comics content, I came
across this link. Chk it out
racs...@gmail.com
>
> It's 2008, if a newspaper editor can't figure out how to use
> banner/pop-up ads, then maybe they deserve to go out of business . . .
Oh, please, if you know how to use banners and pop-ups to pay a staff
of reporters, to pay for computers, to pay the rent on an office, to
pay for office supplies and technical support, and to do it so that
you can report the news from a local area and not on a Slate/Salon
scale, share it right here right now.
And I keep Huff Post off the list because she doesn't pay the bulk of
her writers, and most of what is up there is aggregated from
elsewhere.
Let's assume a staff of one dozen, each needing a computer, and let's
say 10 licenses for InDesign, Photoshop and some kind of editorial
archiving software, in addition to what comes bundled. A retainer for
local tech support -- remember that it has to be someone who knows
computers but also knows the specific software required for your
applications.
Desks and chairs for each, rental for office space of a size where
they can all be at work at the same time. Phone system -- cells are
important and I often call my reporters when they're out god knows
where, but customers need a central number, so the cells are extra,
not instead of. (Most reporters have their own cells anyway.)
Copy machine/printer/fax -- this could be a combo with the computers
involved, but you have to pay for the hookup and software.
Don't forget that your payroll not only has to include their base
salary but also a contribution for health insurance, unemployment
insurance, payroll taxes, etc -- to pull a number from a hat, add 30%
to whatever the going rate for a college grad. So if you pay them each
$20,000, figure a minimum of $26,000 per FTE, which assumes that even
your senior staff is at a starting salary. And I think 30% is low.
With that staff, you could probably serve an area with a total
population of, say, 120,000. But you could ratchet that number up
without adding one reporter per 10K people served -- maybe one per
20K.
And you are not going to charge your subscribers for access. This will
all be paid for with pop-ups and banners. So you'll need a sales staff
of at least four people, making commissions but with a guaranteed
salary and also getting health insurance, unemployment, etc. I'd skip
figuring out the commission structure and just assume that you're now
up to 16 FTEs and cost them out the same as those underpaid employees.
At that rate of pay, they'll tend to quit and go elsewhere and your
sales will continually falter because of it, but at least the math is
easier.
Don't forget to pay yourself, by the way. A little profit to make this
all worthwhile?
Okay, how are you going to do this?
Mike Peterson
http://nellieblogs.blogspot.com
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Your points are well taken, and in fact I doubt it can be done, but:
Do you really need an office big enough for everyone? Why can't most
non-shoeleather work be done from the reporter's apartment? Same for
computers -- most reporters will already have (at least) one.
As for software, does it have to be liscensed apps? Gimp and OpenOffice
vs PhotoShop and MS Office etc. Maybe outsource payroll services..
I still don't think you could do it on web ad revenue, but I think you
could come closer.
Ted
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
Pat O'Neill
>
> Your points are well taken, and in fact I doubt it can be done, but:
>
> Do you really need an office big enough for everyone? Why can't most
> non-shoeleather work be done from the reporter's apartment? Same for
> computers -- most reporters will already have (at least) one.
Having worked for a magazine that initially tried to operate just as
you describe, we soon found it not workable. There's a synergy in
everybody being in one place that's missing from the remote location
model...including the ability to instantly got to a colleague or the
boss and say "What do you know about this....?"
> As for software, does it have to be liscensed apps? Gimp and OpenOffice
> vs PhotoShop and MS Office etc. Maybe outsource payroll services..
Perhaps...but with such unlicensed apps, who do you call when it
doesn't work the way it's supposed to at deadline?
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Well, if it happens at deadline, you're pretty well screwed anyway:
"Have you tried rebooting?"
"Well, reinstall Windows and your application -- that will fix it".
"Have you de-installed all your non-Microsoft apps?"
"Nobody else has ever reported this problem".
racs...@gmail.com
> On Dec 18, 1:59 pm, t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) wrote:
>
>
>
> > Your points are well taken, and in fact I doubt it can be done, but:
>
> > Do you really need an office big enough for everyone? Why can't most
> > non-shoeleather work be done from the reporter's apartment? Same for
> > computers -- most reporters will already have (at least) one.
>
> Having worked for a magazine that initially tried to operate just as
> you describe, we soon found it not workable. There's a synergy in
> everybody being in one place that's missing from the remote location
> model...including the ability to instantly got to a colleague or the
> boss and say "What do you know about this....?"
Exactly. And, if nothing else, you need a place for staff meetings.
And, as chief editor and lord high everything else, I want to know
that my worker bees are working. Our reporters often write at home and
email in their work and I don't mind that -- though I end up have to
search-and-replace for quotation marks and other stuff that gets
messed up in translation. But they need to be here from time to time
so we can talk. It's supposed to be a team.
And I say that as someone who has done projects with four different
artists, none of whom I've ever met in person, one of whom lives
exactly 12 hours away as the world turns. I'm not against
telecommuting in general. But local coverage of news is a team sport
and you need to be able to huddle.
>
> > As for software, does it have to be liscensed apps? Gimp and OpenOffice
> > vs PhotoShop and MS Office etc. Maybe outsource payroll services..
>
> Perhaps...but with such unlicensed apps, who do you call when it
> doesn't work the way it's supposed to at deadline?
And, anyway, this is a professional organization. I had that stupid
OpenOffice on my own computer for about 30 days. It's not exactly
scumware but it sure ain't for grownups.
Mike Peterson
http://nellieblogs.blogspot.com
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
racs...@gmail.com
.
>
> >Perhaps...but with such unlicensed apps, who do you call when it
> >doesn't work the way it's supposed to at deadline?
>
> Well, if it happens at deadline, you're pretty well screwed anyway:
Actually, there's no such thing as a deadline in the on-line world.
Or, to put it another way, you're always on deadline.
Mike Peterson
http://nellieblogs.blogspot.com
Jym Dyer
> [From the link: Detroit papers drop home delivery to 3 days a week]
=v= It's those damn unions again!
<_Jym_>
Jym Dyer
>> OpenOffice vs PhotoShop and MS Office etc. Maybe outsource
>> payroll services..
> Perhaps...but with such unlicensed apps, who do you call when
> it doesn't work the way it's supposed to at deadline?
=v= You know, that question was answered in the first draft of
the GNU Manifesto, around 20 years ago. If there's no money to
be made in selling free software, there's certainly money to be
made in supporting it.
=v= I very quickly found matches for "openoffice support" and
"gimp support". One caveat, though: I did this with my free
Firefox browser at a free search engine website. :^)
<_Jym_>
Dann
4a2f-9e85-4...@r15g2000prh.googlegroups.com.
> On Dec 17, 9:40 am, Tank <Tank...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Latest:http://tinyurl.com/54s84e
>
> [From the link: Detroit papers drop home delivery to 3 days a week]
>
> Honestly, that would make me drop my subscription (or maybe change it
> to Sunday only). I like having my daily routine of looking at the
> paper in the morning. Three days a week would just be irritating.
Delivery on only 3 days a week and outstaters have to pay an extra $0.25 a
day to get it as well. The latter has been going on for some time now. It
is as if they would rather not cover the entire state.