We kind of knew it was coming, but today’s announcement that the Burlington Free Press switch to a tabloid format is at hand still came as an unwelcome surprise at my house. We kind of like the big-sheets littering our breakfast table.
Of course, the BFP experience has been modified numerous times since news giant Gannett acquired the paper back in the early ’70’s.
Free Press readers saw the same decline in breadth and depth that was visited on so many papers over the past couple of decades as ownership consolidated and online media pressured the bottom line.
Fans of the “funnies,” like my (then) young son, mourned repeated raids on the comic pages.
Finally, in a company-wide sweep that laid off 700 employees nationwide, the Free Press lost six of its newsroom staff in 2008.
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The new format will feature “color on every page.” That sounds attractive enough, but it hints at the possibility that there may come to be more emphasis on engaging pictures than on expository text. Could the Free Press one day feature a “centerfold” like some British news tabloids?
What most concerned me about today’s announcement is that it seems to suggest that there will be two different “tiers” of news provided to subscribers. Print subscribers will get a more expansive product, while online readers will be paying for something less complete:
“Our strategy is to create a more robust website and be the media of now on the Web, with in-depth narrative reporting in print,” said Jim Fogler, president and publisher of the Free Press.
What exactly a “more robust website” might be is an open question. Despite much promisory hyperbole I am doubtful that less will mean more.
“Local news and in-depth coverage, that’s our franchise and we will not waver from that,” Fogler said. “We will offer more narrative and more polish for print as opposed to what we post online.”
As a daily print subscriber who values the opportunity to source the entire text via the web for the purpose of engendering a fully-informed dialogue with GMD readers, I don’t much like where this seems to be going. If I were solely a web subscriber, I would like it even less.
We could have a different conversation about paywalls: their pros and cons. This isn’t about paywalls; it is about simple access. I think the Free Press has some more explaining to do.
As we ponder the new mini-Freep and its sidekick paywall read below about the sizable golden parachute that carried Gannett’s retiring CEO to a soft landing and tell again me with a straight face it’s the internet that did in the newspapers.
Sure newspapers have suffered loses of readership & advertising ,cutbacks,upheavals caused by the internet but…
http://gannettblog.blogspot.co…
http://jimromenesko.com/2012/0…
Last gasp of a dying paper. RIP Freeps.
I’m not as concerned with the “tall tabloid”-izing of the Freep, as I am with the paywall. I realize that the newspaper business is losing revenue and seems to be caught in a downward spiral — less revenue, fewer pages and reporters, poorer product, higher prices, lower sales, lather, rinse, repeat — and they have to make money somehow. (The executive bonuses and corporate model certainly don’t help matters, of course. But they’re only one part of a much bigger problem.)
But with the Freep joining the Rutland Herald and Times Argus (among others) behind paywalls, we’re going to have a major shortage of widely-available news. Vermont Digger is excellent but limited; other free online sources covering the state include VPR, Seven Days, and the two TV stations. All have their own limits, and none have the ability to cover the waterfront. There won’t be much news feeding the public discourse. The Freep’s pending paywall (and shrinkifying) is one more step into a deep tunnel whose exit is not yet visible.
I can pay now, and still see all the ad vomit all over their paper?
I’d consider under the following conditions:
1. They replace the ads with 1 per page, in a specific location.
2. They feature anyone who breaks 100 comments in a year on the front page – full bio, news story, investigative reporting, line up photos (if there are any), dirt digging, etc. etc.
3. They publicly kill off the ‘Deal Chicken’.
4. They let someone else write ‘The Voice of the Free Press’. When often times the sports scores are thicker than the news stories – I have no interest in what ‘The Voice of the Free Press’ has to say.
Tabloid? Color? So they aren’t going to be a 50% or more ‘AP’ feed aggregator?
has anyone caught the irony in the Free Press promising color on every page of its upcoming tabloid format when they’ve just eliminated color from half of the Sunday comics?
Yeah, I’d much rather see a bunch of advertising for sales at JC Penney and Walmart, and celebrity gossip in color than the funny papers!
My Dad, who used to share the funnies with my sister and me when we were too little to read them ourselves, must be spinning in his cosmic existence!