Could Philly be first big city with no daily newspaper?

[art clemons]

This piece by Michael Sokolove in the NYTimes Magazine raises interesting
points about big city newspapers and especially those in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia newspapers right now are in bankruptcy court and may not
survive the experience, or drastic cuts could be made, cuts so drastic
that the papers in effect would cease to exist as news entities.

Among suggestions by the present "owners" is selling the Inquirer bldg
(bluntly this would have worked much better when the real estate market
was booming) and possibly more cuts. I am not impressed with the chances
of survival and wonder just what Philly will be like without daily
newspapers.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/magazine/09Newspaper-t.html?
pagewanted=all>
http://tinyurl.com/lcynu6

[Matthew Russotto]

Post by art clemons
Among suggestions by the present "owners" is selling the Inquirer bldg
(bluntly this would have worked much better when the real estate market
was booming) and possibly more cuts. I am not impressed with the chances
of survival and wonder just what Philly will be like without daily
newspapers.

The Reading Terminal Market vendors will need to wrap their fish with
something else.

As a newspaper, the Inquirer is a joke.

[Der Tschonnie]

Post by Matthew Russotto

Post by art clemons
Among suggestions by the present "owners" is selling the Inquirer bldg
(bluntly this would have worked much better when the real estate market
was booming) and possibly more cuts.  I am not impressed with the chances
of survival and wonder just what Philly will be like without daily
newspapers.

The Reading Terminal Market vendors will need to wrap their fish with
something else.

<snip>

The suburban papers will move in. Somebody like William Dean
Singleton (Media News Group - check the company out with ReferenceUSA
- a database accessible with your library card) will buy the Inquirer
and make it really bad. Then he'll buy a couple of suburban papers
and merge the reporting and backoffice operations. The cost to
publish a Media News Group Inquirer would be marginally more than any
of the other papers.

The NYT is not capable of doing anything like a fifth section for
Philadelphia. Maybe the Courier-Post (still Gannett?) could expand
east? That happened in south Florida where the Miami Herald is in
decline but the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel is in the ascent; it has
the ads and street cred now.

It's all speculation on my part, except that what I've described
happened in the Bay Area with WDS's chain of newspapers. He was
negotiating to buy the Chronicle as well. The San Gabriel Valley
Newspaper Group rings downtown LA to the east, and the LA Daily News
(that one too) covers the equivalent of the Northeast and is
distributed in the center of the city too.

My two cents' worth. God help you.

[D.F. Manno]

Post by art clemons
This piece by Michael Sokolove in the NYTimes Magazine raises interesting
points about big city newspapers and especially those in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia newspapers right now are in bankruptcy court and may not
survive the experience, or drastic cuts could be made, cuts so drastic
that the papers in effect would cease to exist as news entities.
Among suggestions by the present "owners" is selling the Inquirer bldg
(bluntly this would have worked much better when the real estate market
was booming) and possibly more cuts. I am not impressed with the chances
of survival and wonder just what Philly will be like without daily
newspapers.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/magazine/09Newspaper-t.html>
http://tinyurl.com/lcynu6

I haven't read the article yet, but I doubt Philly would be without a
paper for long. One of two things would happen: either someone would
come in and buy the Inky/DN assets at a fire sale and start a new paper,
or one or more suburban dailies will fill the void with city editions.

[D.F. Manno]

Post by D.F. Manno

Post by art clemons
This piece by Michael Sokolove in the NYTimes Magazine raises interesting
points about big city newspapers and especially those in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia newspapers right now are in bankruptcy court and may not
survive the experience, or drastic cuts could be made, cuts so drastic
that the papers in effect would cease to exist as news entities.
Among suggestions by the present "owners" is selling the Inquirer bldg
(bluntly this would have worked much better when the real estate market
was booming) and possibly more cuts. I am not impressed with the chances
of survival and wonder just what Philly will be like without daily
newspapers.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/magazine/09Newspaper-t.html>
http://tinyurl.com/lcynu6

I haven't read the article yet, but I doubt Philly would be without a
paper for long. One of two things would happen: either someone would
come in and buy the Inky/DN assets at a fire sale and start a new paper,
or one or more suburban dailies will fill the void with city editions.

I've read the article. Sokolove makes a good point, one you don't often
see in the "print is dead" declarations. Online sources have neither the
resources nor the audiences that major dailies do. There's no way they
can supplant newspapers, not right now.

Furthermore, a newspaper serves a function as aggregator and gatekeeper.
It provides a wide variety of information in one convenient package. To
duplicate that, you'd need to read scores if not hundreds of blogs/Web
sites/Twitter feeds/etc. Yes, like the Public School Notebook Sokolove
mentions, many of those online sources may be run by experts and may go
into much greater detail than a newspaper does or can do. However, most
readers don't need that level of detail, as shown by the low circulation
of that Notebook.