Slashdot Mirror
Internet Kills LA Times National Edition
Doc Ruby writes "The LA Times announced that it is folding its national edition on 12/31/04. The Times spokesperson said the paper's mission has been to reach 'key Washington, D.C., and New York audiences,' and that 'other electronic ways of reaching those audiences became more plentiful.' The folding edition will be replaced by "remote printing" by NewspaperDirect, and their email highlights, Top of the Times. Is this the way all our newspapers will be going?"
Is this the way all our newspapers will be going?"
No, they're just targeting the wrong audience.
why does it matter that an LA paper gets to New York audiences in paper form? Furthermore, if you were in NY or DC, why would you buy the LA Times? What news do that have that local papers don't? (Surely there must be papers with both slants locally).
It can't possibly be that we already have enough newspapers on the East Coast?
The internet is probably a good thing for newspapers, I doubt that it will become the be all, end all (though reading a broad sheet on the subway/train/bus is a bit of a pain). It's a great way to deliver content, to kep people apprised of things up to the minute, and it keeps our newsstands from being crowded.
What we really need is a nice method where all your news is synced to your PDA automatically every morning so you can read it on the way to work. However as much as I like electronic media you can't beat a real news paper sitting in the sunshine or in front of the fire
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
That is a strength of newspapers too, they have the time to make reasoned, thought out comments about what has happened the previous day.
Let's look at the newspapers which are making a go of it with nationwide printings: USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and the NY Times.
USA Today - Marketed at travelers who might be interested in a snippet of hometown news. The McDonalds of newspapers.
The Wall Street Journal - Business oriented coverage with a solid conservative editorial page. The newspaper for Republican men.
The New York Times - Amazingly diverse coverage and in depth coverage, with excellent coverage of the Arts and a predictably liberal editorial page. The newspaper for literate urbanites.
The LA Time could have looked for another niche, but they basically are a poor clone of the New York Times. I used to read it quite often when I worked in LA and there is nothing about it that would recommend it over the other Times. Their whole market would be lonesome Southern Californians wanting to keep up with the music scene in Santa Monica.
It'd be nice if another newspaper could challenge the WSJ or the NYT for nationwide coverage. The Chicago Tribune and Washington Post have the potential to do so; I think the Post has the best liberal editorial page in the country, and the Trib is just a solid paper, but there is only so many people in the market for national papers.
Seems to be a rather popular scapegoat for companies with poor ( or outdated ) business models these days.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
But did it seem to anyone else that the L.A. Times in the past year or two had gotten WAY too opinionated in their HARD NEWS stories? I mean, I read the LA times occationally, but it seemed somewhere around a year after 9/11 it became VIOLENTLY anti-Bush/anti-republican. I mean, ALL media sources have bias. Here in NY, we have the amazing NY Times. And yes, it has an "opinion" on world politics. Despite what conservative radio says though, I felt that the NY Times still kept it's job of presenting the news in a fair way. The opinion/Op-Ed pages of the NY Times rightfully had opinions (and twice a week has "conservative" writers), so I felt there was fairness there.
But... take a crappy (although sometimes guilty pleasure) newspaper like the NY Post. It's a tabloid newspaper that 4/7 times a week the front page headline will be "OH NO PARIS HILTON (did whatever)" or this week, despite all the news in the world, the #1 story that took the entire front page cover was some guy buying a $10,000 martini (i kid you not). (I always assumed "The Daily Beagle" from Spiderman was based on the Post)
Again... this is NOT a political flamewar/troll post... and I like listening to talkradio, but if I listen to Air America or Hannity, I know what I'm getting. They'll focus on the topics of "their" side. But... I don't want that when I read hard news. Luckily, the NY Times doesn't do that. A typical page 1 lately has the #1 story of the day, something about Iraq, some economy/employment article, a local (NY) story, and big international news. Perhaps a blurb/picture about a big sports event. While they will often have stories showing porblems in the Iraq war - hey, problems exist. But they also recently had a story of how women are regaining power in Iraq and schools are being rapidly built (sounds fair to me).
But the LA Times seemed like the NY Post at times. Did anyone else notice during the recall election there was a story about Arnold, and it was negative EVERY DAY? I mean, come on.
For disclosure, I voted Kerry and I voted Gore in 2000. I watch opinion shows for their opinions. When I read about hard news, I want the news, not spin (with the exception of the Op-Ed page). Perhaps (i'm seriously asking here, not flaming), is this why their publication numbers fell? Comments? Once again, and finally, this is NOT a political flamewar/troll post. Just my opinion.
The problem [phrusa.org] with the "Los Angeles Times" and the "New York Times" is that most Americans perceive them to be biased. For example, the Abu Ghraib story ran 19+ times on the front pages, but the story about Saddam Hussein's torture of women and children ran far fewer times.
Wow, so they suffer from the same accusations as Slashdot of being too US-centric?
I would have taken it for granted that crimes by the US government would be of greater interest to the US public than crimes by a foreign dictator and would get more US press attention. Guess my vision is too narrow.
Were they upset by the massive coverage of the US elections in those publications compared to coverage of the Norwegian elections as well?
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
The news wasn't that torture was going on in the world. The news was that the USA (you know, the "good guys") was joining in on it.