"Faced with an ad market that no longer supplies enough revenues to meet costs, many newspapers are now considering putting up pay walls on their Web sites, long an anathema in Internet culture," declared David before following up with a run-on sentence and then one whining about 'poor' AP. The reader might think (and Carr appeared to) that ad revenue was how the AP makes money. Wrong. The AP makes money by charging its members. Not a standard fee, in fact. They can (and frequently do) increase fees when they feel an event (sporting, political or war) will require more money.
AP's business model (long a monopoly) is based on what AP wants it to be and there was no reason for Carr to include AP in an article which repeatedly touched on advertising (including the decision by The Los Angeles Times to run an ad on their front page which many could and did mistake for reporting).
Sidebar, AP really doesn't want to piss off the blogosphere. March 31st C.I. (and Ava, Kat and Wally) attended a Senate Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing on Iraqi refugees which C.I. wrote up (we say "reported on," C.I. says "wrote up") for the March 31st snapshot. April 1st, AP 'reported' on the hearing but, as C.I. noted that morning, "AP misplaces 1.1 million Iraqi refugees." As C.I. points out, the number was established in the initial round of questioning and was then used repeatedly in the hearing. It's also true that AP grabbed a copy of Senator Bob Casey Jr.'s press release which used the correct number throughout. Even so AP couldn't get the figure correct in their 'report.' Point? That's no uncommon. And just yesterday, C.I. included this in an entry: "Contrary to a really bad AP report (we're not linking), Kristoffer Walker did not make a stand in January and announce he was not returning. That was in February and you can see this Feb. 23rd snapshot for more." The Associated Press has cut back on positions and a lot, A LOT, of mistakes are making it into their articles repeatedly. If they really want to go to war on the blogosphere, they may piss off the wrong group of people who may decide to start monitoring their 'reporting' and creating a score card. If that happens, watch AP's 'brand' plummet because who wants to run stories by a national laughingstock?
We're done with AP for the rest of this article.
David Carr's article was based on the woes. The woes of the every day whiner.
Back before he started mainlining Barack's Kool-Aid, Norman Solomon was capable of making a coherent argument and one of them, in 2006, was how the newspapers were not in the trouble they said they were. That the profit many papers were turning was an acceptable profit every where but with Wall Street. He also dreamed daily of a sort-of combine, a journalist owned and operated newspaper.
These days, he's too busy wet dreaming over Barack to form a passing thought, let alone an argument. Which is too bad because before he became a Barack Junkie, he could have told Carr what's what.
Carr's article is based on the dwindling reader theory and it's real funny how newspapers never take accountability for their own problems. And that's especially funny with regards to The New York Times. As pointed out Monday, "For the New York Times, any article on the lack of newsprint being the first and last stop should include the names: Jayson Blair and Judith Miller. Among many, many others." Somehow those names escape Carr's attention despite the fact that both made the paper a laughing stock.
But let's talk the reality Carr wouldn't or couldn't because we've got various age groups, we've got people who were journalism majors (Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava), you've got two who grew up in news families (Ava and C.I.) and you've got some actual subscribers in the mix.
Does David Carr subscribe to a paper? If he does, that needs to be his next column. And it needs to be honest.
A number of us live here on the West Coast at C.I.'s and there are no problems with the deliveries of the various newspapers but only because C.I. no longer uses The New York Times (and others) paper service. C.I. cut deals with local distributors and gets the paper promptly each morning at the same time. If you have a ton of cash to waive around, it could happen to you as well.
But for most of us, that's not the case.
Which leads to the "Will the paper get here before I have to leave for the day?"
That wouldn't be a problem for C.I. and it's not one for Elaine (it's left with the doorman of her highrise) or Rebecca ("It's a small island, we all know each other). But for many people, a paper tossed on the yard or near the door needs to be snapped up within ten to fifteen minutes of hitting the ground -- otherwise a neighbor's grabbing it.
How many time this decade has the paper switched contractors? And we're not even talking about the delivery contractors, we're talking about their contracted 'customer service.' By February 2008, the problems were non-stops. We heard about it from readers and were toying with writing about it back then. When The New York Times ever complains about their falling subscription base, they have no one to blame but themselves because they have NO IDEA how bad the situation is. As late as last January, we were getting regular reports from subscribers calling to complain about papers not being delivered (1-800-NYTIMES) only to be cursed out and hung up on by the 'cheerful' women (do they have any men answering the phone?) working for the contractors. (Anyone at the paper wanting to shop those phone lines should do so between five and six a.m. EST which is when most of the cursing and hang ups take place.)
One apparently universal complaint is that the latest round of contracted carriers (delivery) are no longer delivering to the door. Now they toss it on the yard, on the curb, sometimes in the street. There is no quality oversight. And the paper wants to whine when subscribers walk?
People like Carr like to pontificate about how cities used to have an afternoon and morning paper. Yes, and cities also used to have multiple papers. That actually encouraged buying a newspaper because if one had lousy service, you could switch papers and get a different carrier as a result in most cases.
The newspaper is no longer the primary resource for news and as they began to happen, they all should have started reconsidering their models and evaluating various services. The one service they never seem to improve on or even consider is the subscription one.
When people are being cursed out by 'customer reps' at the customer hotline, the newspaper business has a problem. And The New York Times can claim that it's not them, that they contract it out. Doesn't make a damn bit of difference. That number (1-800-NYTIMES) not only has the paper's name it, you only call it when you can't get a paper.
And it takes a long time before most subscribers figure out (or are told) that the employees they are speaking to (the ones who answer "New York Times") do not work for the paper.
In one of the worst cases we've heard of, a subscriber of the paper has been complaining about one delivery issue since February 2008 and has repeatedly been told that he will be called by someone. He has never been called by anyone. And when he calls to complain again (and again) about the same problem, the customer rep will usually bring up, "I see on my screen that this was passed on up and ___ was supposed to get back to you." And ___ never does. Never has. Never will. That's over a year with the same problem. (The subscriber is giving it until July and then cancelling.)
David Carr wanted to whine which is all the Dockers Boy are ever good for but, notice, with them it's always a self-whine.
So David Carr stitched together a really bad column of the same factoids and bromides that have been talking points for about three years now. He had nothing to add and, most of all, he forgot the customer.
That is the problem.
He does grasp that, right?
When he's whining about lost revenues, he does grasp that the amount of readers determine advertising rates, right?
And he does grasp that for-profit newspapers are in the business of selling papers.
So when he wants to ponder the state of newspapers next and fret over dropping circulations, maybe he should get off his fat, candied ass and try speaking to some of the paper's subscribers and some of their former subscribers.
That might be too much work for a Docker Boy but that's another thing. Once upon a time, when newspapers paid columnists, they paid them for doing something other than gas bagging with the same talking points. They expected the columnists to interact with actual people and to never forget the public as part of the story.
The refusal to continue to do that may go a long way towards explaining the continual decline of circulation. But that's the point, it's not one easy reason and it didn't just start yesterday. It's a longterm process of driving your readers away and a number of papers have worked overtime to do just that.
