I check in on two Daily Dammit, Gannett newspaper Web sites: The Springfield News-Leader and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. I don’t read much of them because their articles are mostly behind a very good paywall, but I do check out the local contests.
But I guess the ad pool is shrinking, because not only do we get ads for things that are not local in the “Shopping” section:
I mean, I listen to the radio all the time, so I know a lot of local jingles, but, brother, that ain’t one of them. Maybe it plays before streaming videos, YouTube content, or on obscure channels all the time. But, yeah, no clue what that is.
And we get contests clearly targeted to people in other regions, like this one:
At least, I presume the Michigan one is targeted to Wisconsin and Michigan people, but it’s on the News-Leader web site. I know that I’ve filled out the form before for a contest for a getaway at, what, the Indianapolis 500 or a golf getaway only to get denied (presumably after my contact information was saved somewhere for sale or rent) with a message that indicated they did not accept entries from my location.
Not cricket, and probably indicative of how the ad and marketing budgets are drying up for the big papers.
Oh, and I’ve also started getting calls and texts from one of the companies sponsoring the contests even though I meticulously opt out. So, in desperation, Gannett is courting a class action suit somewhere down the line.
Eh, free Internet content is worth what you pay for it, gentle reader, as you well know but are too polite to say.
Gannet bought the local paper, the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise of late and modest renown. The only things local are the obituaries, legal notices and advertisements. In the print edition, anyway, I imagine the online version is filled with the same non-sequiturs as you have shown. It was never much, but it was local. I’m probably jumping the gun, but I think before long it will be -30- for the good ol’ E-E (or as it was sometimes noon after an error, the Hee-Hee).
The Springfield News-Leader has been a Gannett paper since we’ve been down here. I subscribed to it when we first lived down here, but I noticed the shrinkage even then. I still see the paper when I go to the dentist’s office, and I see it is down to one page of local news (like three stories max), USA Today stories, some sports, and some comics. It’s like four broadsheets/eight pages total. Three stories. For a city daily.
As you might know, for a time I took the local weeklies from various places around the state where I’d driven through and found a non-Gannett paper. However, a lot of them are getting bought up by regional newspapers which then shrink the papers similarly. The Republic Monitor is now the Greene County Commonwealth, and its front page three stories are spread across Republic, Ash Grove, and/or Willard coupled with a page of columns from regional columnists (and the publisher whose takes are a little out of step with his readership most likely). The Phelps County Focus recently got acquired. The Marshfield Mail is down to News-Leader size. And these are the bigger papers with full color inserts and everything.
I guess there’s a spreadsheet and a method somewhere about how to extract the most ROI from subscribers instead of how to provide the best value to subscribers. Like with everything in this 21st century.
Thanks for stopping by. You been lurking this whole time or just dropping in occasionally?