Sunday Herald no more

[Kipper is King]

This sucks. I enjoy reading the paper with a cup of coffee on a lazy Sunday morning.

[Northendzone]

Hhhhmmm, 50 less papers per year. The price of my subscription is going down right?

[Jimmy Stang]

I'm surprised that newspapers have lasted as long as they have, to be honest. In a few years, I'll be explaining to my currently 9-month-old son what newspapers were.

"That's right son. They would take all of the news that you had already read/seen/heard elsewhere 24-36 hours ago, print it overnight on actual paper that is of inconvenient size, embed the odd local story among things that they mostly pulled off of the wire (and a lot of ads), pay people to deliver it to your home or business early in the morning, you would read it for a few minutes, and then throw it in the recycling."

Print is dead, and they are starting to admit it now. The big challenge will be monetizing digital news after people have been accustomed to reading it for free. Pay walls are going to get more and more common, but whether people will be willing to subscribe or pay by the article is the big question. They certainly won't if a reasonable, free alternative exists.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by Lt.Spears

Who reads the newspaper anymore? I get all my local news from CP.

I love CP as much as the next guy, but I don't know what news you're getting from here?

There's lots of good local discussion on hot topics and what not, but I wouldn't say you get any kind of a run down of the daily Calgary news on CP, that you get from the newspaper.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by Regulator75

How long until dirty newsprint finally dies?

When guys stop taking dumps?

[Yeah_Baby]

Originally Posted by Dion

Who reads the print copies in this day and age. The online version is so much better and you don't have all the print to recycle when you're done reading it.

I can understand the waste argument. But I just really like holding paper in my hands, books, newspapers. I'm old school like that.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Stang

Print is dead, and they are starting to admit it now. The big challenge will be monetizing digital news after people have been accustomed to reading it for free. Pay walls are going to get more and more common, but whether people will be willing to subscribe or pay by the article is the big question. They certainly won't if a reasonable, free alternative exists.

I wonder if eventually they might re-start printing the news to counter piracy.

[Sr. Mints]

From a journalism instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic in Vancouver, which I honestly hadn't heard of before.

An open letter to journalism students

You saw the news today: Postmedia has chopped at least two dozen jobs, killed some of its newspapers’ Sunday edition, temporarily suspended Monday publication of The National Post and stopped printing on most holidays.


You may have noticed, in the coverage, the reasons: the company’s last quarterly financial report contained an operating loss of $11 million, and Postmedia is carrying a debt more than $510 million. Revenue from ads and circulation is still falling, partly because of a slow-growing economy but mostly because of long-term trends.


What you may not have noticed is that last week, there was – every single day, from Monday to Friday – news of layoffs and cancelled print editions from newspapers in the U.S. and Britain. So, we are into our sixth straight business day of bad news for newspapers.


I don’t want you to think, though, that we’re seeing the death of newspapers or of journalism itself.



Newspapers are, indeed, changing and changing rapidly. They are becoming smaller (in pages and staff) and more locally focussed. They are putting increasing burdens on reporting staff: Your copy better be good and it better be clean, because it will be read by fewer editors. You better bring more to the office than the ability to report and write. If you’re not engaged with audience through social media, you had better get there and get there quickly.

The rest: http://www.tamark.ca/public/2012/05/28/an-open-letter-to-journalism-students/

[tenyardrambo]

the newspaper is much bigger/thicker now a days, I used to recycle the newspaper once a month now you have to do it every two weeks

[Misterpants]

Hopefully they stop publishing "Neighbours" as well. As much as I love picking up a rain soaked ball of Best Buy flyers and articles on pee-wee soccer...

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Misterpants

Hopefully they stop publishing "Neighbours" as well. As much as I love picking up a rain soaked ball of Best Buy flyers and articles on pee-wee soccer...

Neighbours is one of the biggest wastes of paper of all time but for some reason I can't fathom, it's one of their bigger revenue sources as it gets delivered to those without Herald subscriptions in order to get people advertising flyers. Why can't they just deliver the flyers?

Contrast the fortunes of the Herald with the success (and tree destroying power) of free commuter papers like Metro. People seem perfectly happy getting their daily news fix from casual free papers like that rather than a full blown newspaper. And those that want in-depth coverage and good articles will turn to news magazines. Seems no place for the middle ground newspaper to survive and flourish.

[Misterpants]

I'm pretty sure that Neighbours is like the cockroach. Thirty years from now in a post-apocalyptic Calgary, I'll crawl out of my bunker every Friday to find a neatly rolled up copy of Neighbours.

[albertGQ]

Originally Posted by flameswin

When guys stop taking dumps?

That's what smart phones are for

[JiriHrdina]

I love reading the newspaper over a cup of coffee. Yes I can read everything online but for me it isn't the same. That being said - I never read the Herald because it is too damn cumbersome. I've never understood why they refused to go to the tabloid size.

[fredr123]

Thread title is a little misleading, no? The Herald is ditching it's Sunday edition but will continue to put out a regular edition Monday through Saturday (with Saturday being a new "Weekend" edition).

[sevenarms]

What about the Sunday comics?!

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by fredr123

Thread title is a little misleading, no? The Herald is ditching it's Sunday edition but will continue to put out a regular edition Monday through Saturday (with Saturday being a new "Weekend" edition).

Be interesting to see if that's just a branding exercise. If they were to combine the existing Saterday/Sunday papers into a weekly news summary with lots of features/commentary, I'd subscribe to the "weekend" edition and read it over breakfast on both weekend days. Or, for the 6 weeks a year it's nice, in my hammock.

[Barnet Flame]

I was a paperboy when the Herald went 7 days. From the outset, its commitment for the Sunday edition appeared half-hearted. A much smaller edition than most days when you'd really expect the Sunday edition of a paper to be the most feature packed. They should have made more changes and taken risks like moving the TV Guide edition from a Friday to Sunday.

The Herald never really made a commitment to competing with the Sun for the Sunday market.

[albertGQ]

Originally Posted by Barnet Flame

I was a paperboy when the Herald went 7 days. From the outset, its commitment for the Sunday edition appeared half-hearted. A much smaller edition than most days when you'd really expect the Sunday edition of a paper to be the most feature packed. They should have made more changes and taken risks like moving the TV Guide edition from a Friday to Sunday.

The Herald never really made a commitment to competing with the Sun for the Sunday market.

I think that's what their strategy was. Their flagship paper is on Fridays

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by sevenarms

What about the Sunday comics?!

They'll be just as terrible on other days of the week.