Thursday, December 11, 2008

BEEP..., BEEP..., BEEP..., FLATLINE --------

Well, we've just finished reading our mail from the past month. Now, while some of y'all might think it's crazy to only read your mail once a month, Miss Vero somehow finds it liberatin that we are not a slave to most correspondence, which mostly, just wastes our precious time. Did we mention that we pay all our bills online?

Among the satellite tv offers, coupons for useless things and a Christmas card from President and Mrs. Carter, there were a stack of Verobeach32963, that we took the time to sit down and read.

Let's see what we found...Beautiful Beachies doin the Beautiful Beachie things that they do...Real Estate ads...Very good restaurant reviews that don't make us gag...Real Estate ads...Michelle Genz does a profile of our favorite Jose Lambiet, hmmmm, interesting....Real Estate Ads...Oh, and here's our favorite part - the Editorial.

We especially liked that an entire page, in the December 4th issue,was given to remedy the shameful way that Mr. Ken Daige was treated by the Press Journal, which could possible have lost him the election. We would have preferred to see Mr. Daige and the young fresh Mr. Kevin Sawnick, both able to serve Vero while Mr. Tom "running with scissors" White, got the boot.

Yet, the most interesting for us, was the November 13th editorial, "The Incredible Shrinking Press Journal", which Miss Vero found "ink spot on". Last Sunday, after we had emptied the PJ of all it's annoying advertising fliers, we noticed that the paper was tissue thin, hardly any bigger than the Hometown News. And yes, it seems to get smaller and weaker in physically size and journalistic content as each week goes by.

Perhaps the powers that be, at the parent company, E. W. Scripps, are just planning for the future by economizing on ink and paper. After all, way back in January of 2007, this idea was presented.

"...the company's management "spoke much more positively on the possibility of reducing its exposure to the newspaper industry" http://www.forbes.com/2007/01/10/scripps-newspapers-goldman-markets-equity-cx_rs_0110markets14.html


Just this week, E. W. Scripps has put a Pulitzer winning paper on the market, with little chance of finding a buyer:
http://www.westword.com/2008-12-11/news/the-rocky-mountain-news-is-going-down/

And more newspaper trouble a little closer to home, with news of the Miami Herald for sale: http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/magazines-newspapers/e3i686368ba4cd6a88c345fe88fd6cac2e9

We especially like the little blurb in Gawker that gives the Miami Herald -"Odds of survival: 2-1. If you do not consider a two-page weekly digest of Dave Barry and Carl Hiaasen columns to be "survival," we lower its odds to 3-1.":
http://gawker.com/5104434/the-official-newspaper-survival-odds
(See? We told y'all that Mr. Hiaasen had lost his humor mojo)

And here's a final nail in the coffin from Editor&Publisher, "America's oldest journal covering the newspaper industry", who proclaim this week that -"'Several Cities' Could Have No Daily Paper As Soon As 2010...":
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003918781


While the VB332963 politely offers helpful suggestions to the PJ -"Hire some real reporters and editors.", but concludes that "we confess to doubts that it is going to happen in this difficult economy" and continues with the promise "we intend to continue our news coverage of the local area, particularly as it impacts the Vero Beach barrier island." (yes, we know y'all have to justify those Real Estate ads), we think the future of news is right in front of y'all.

Now of course, at this point we would give y'all a link to the VB32963 article, but we can't and here's where Miss Vero would like to offer a little suggestion to the VB32963. Update your online edition!

And while the VB32963 acknowledges their neglect of this, they counter that they are "focused on getting our print edition into your mailbox each Thursday." Because, guess what? Those Real Estate ads have got to get to you!

The unfortunate truth is that relying on advertising for print media is not a good idea and that if someone doesn't figure out how to make some muhlah on this internet thing (and believe me, Miss Vero hasn't figured it out yet, but we believe that Mr. Milton R. Benjamin is smart enough to), the future of news will be akin to neighbors talkin over a fence, better known as "blogging".

Cocktail in hand, we've got that covered!

MWAH!

missvero@live.com

4 comments:

LDouglas said...

What a coincidence Miss Vero. I commented about this very subject today. And you have it right about the future of news being "akin to neighbors talkin over a fence, better known as "blogging".

It's mentioned in this article about local news coverage in Pasadena Ca. being outsourced to India. (The PJ had an article about it a couple of days ago but I couldn't find that one.)
http://foothillcities.blogspot.com/2007/05/pasadenanow-outsources-local-news.html

Now, the day the PJ outsources our local coverage to India will be the day I give it up. It has nothing to do with nativism or xenophobia. I gladly buy fair trade items from India and other countries. It's corporate business practices that I don't like. In the first link you provide about Scripps selling off it's newspapers was this:

"Elimination of the newspaper unit would meaningfully enhance the company's growth prospects and likely translate into a higher valuation for the shares," said Appert."

It's that "growth prospects" part that I think is a good portion of the real trouble with newspapers or rather the corporations that own them. How can they or any corporation for that matter think they can continue to grow profits when most of the adult population growth is limited to the working poor? And the growth of the young population are all born with a mouse in their hand.

Anyway, I don't think the day of newspapers are over- just maybe the day of a corporately owned one. I still think there's room for them to not just survive, but profit. They just need to be keyed into their customers and go for quality not quantity.

GOLDFIELDS GIRL aka ANDREA said...

Miss Vero - I saw your comment on "Just a Girl" about my sticky-beaking phrase ....... its a polite termonology for, I don't know how to para-phrase it, looking over your neighbours fence.... It is truely meant in all good faith.

You must wonder over one day to the great, big land of OZ - as we never take ANYTHING seriously .... no joke!!

Cheers - Andrea

Claudia Balint said...

we had the unfortunate experience of having our name listed in the courthouse news as being foreclosed on...i called the paper and was told it was the courthouse's fault. i found out that the courthouse news they printed was more than three weeks old, and during that time, the issue for which we were (mistakenly) being foreclosed had been resolved. I asked the person at scripps if the paper was interested in at least printing a correction, and again, the person i was speaking to said it was the courthouse's fault. ok. never mind.

Anonymous said...

Ew, I just lost all respect for this writer. Personally, I'd rather read the rants of a drunk or a drug addict. At least there's a sense of integrity to the obsession.

Carl Hiassen Eco-Terrorist Golfer