I should first say that I don’t want to come off as being negative about the Enterprise or the Herald. They are a great resource that we link to quite often.
That being said, I picked up today’s edition of the Enterprise and on the front cover there’s a story titled “Enterprise to Merge South County Editions”. In short, the poor economy and insufficient advertising support are forcing the Enterprise to make two changes. The first, they are discontinuing the Shoreline/Lake Forest Park Edition of the Enterprise because it “was the one that didn’t fit.” The second big change: what once was three papers will now be one. The Edmonds, Mill Creek and Mountlake Terrace/Lynnwood editions of the Enterprise will be consolidated in to a single South County edition.
The Enterprise is owned by the Herald, who is owned by the Washington Post. And by Washington Post I mean D.C., as in the other side of the country.
Unfortunately the amount of news in the paper won’t be the sum of the three existing papers. The Enterprise says that “the paper, typically from 12 to 16 pages, will be expanded by 2 to 6 pages based on advertising.” I take this to mean that while I am now reading a paper that has 16 pages of news and advertising relevant to Mountlake Terrace/Lynnwood, the new consolidated paper will increase by 2 to pages while adding news from 2 additional cities. I can’t help but think this will mean less news about my community and my neighborhood.
This also seems like bad news for local businesses who want to advertise. The way the Enterprise sells advertising right now is that you can choose which editions of the paper you want to advertise in. So, for example, a business in Mountlake Terrace could choose to only pay for advertising in the MLT/Lynnwood edition. Unless they rely on more regional business, this is likely what most businesses would choose to do. Now, the same Mountlake Terrace business will be paying to advertise to MLT/Lynnwood, but also to Edmonds and Mill Creek. Sure, the advertisement is going to be seen by twice as many people, but not the people they want to reach.
As more and more newspapers consolidate or even fail, community news sites are going to be even more important in getting the news out about things that are happening in your neighborhood. Your posts, tips and comments help make this happen. If you’re interested in posting on MLTnews.com, email info@MLTnews.com for more info about becoming a contributor . If you’re a local business and want to get the word out while supporting a community news site, see more info about becoming a sponsor (it’s cheap!)
I think many of us saw this coming for some time. When a newspaper starts selling advertising space on its FRONT page, it can't be a good sign. Until recently, the only way for a business to get on the front page of any newspaper was to swindle their customers out of millions, spill oil in a remote Alaskan Gulf, or commit some other travesty that warrants their story front and center of a printed medium.It's been a trend the last couple years, and moreso recently, for ads to be placed on the front page, where top dollar can be fetched. Unfortunately, selling out the front page, and merging regions into a single paper are probably only the beginning of the end for printed journalism.
I think many of us saw this coming for some time. When a newspaper starts selling advertising space on its FRONT page, it can’t be a good sign. Until recently, the only way for a business to get on the front page of any newspaper was to swindle their customers out of millions, spill oil in a remote Alaskan Gulf, or commit some other travesty that warrants their story front and center of a printed medium.rnrnIt’s been a trend the last couple years, and moreso recently, for ads to be placed on the front page, where top dollar can be fetched. rnrnUnfortunately, selling out the front page, and merging regions into a single paper are probably only the beginning of the end for printed journalism.
I completely agree. Community news sites will need to fill the gap when newspapers die. I would love for MLTnews to get in to more investigative journalism at some point. Traditional journalism is a small number of people committing a lot of time and community journalism is a large number of people contributing a small amount of time. The more people we get involved with MLTnews the better.
I completely agree. Community news sites will need to fill the gap when newspapers die. I would love for MLTnews to get in to more investigative journalism at some point. Traditional journalism is a small number of people committing a lot of time and community journalism is a large number of people contributing a small amount of time. The more people we get involved with MLTnews the better.
Newspapers are so yesterday. Seems wasteful and bad for the environment to be burning all that gas to drop off paper that may often not get read.I delivered the Seattle P-I for a few years, so I really did appreciate newspapers. I subscribed to the NY Times for several years and loved getting the Sunday edition.However, the newspapers are getting gutted of their personalities. The Seattle Times was okay to read on Sundays, but now it's a shell of a newspaper without the people who used to write interesting stories.The web is just much better. There was a time when there was one restaurant reviewer, John Hinterberger, for the Seattle times. It's hard to fathom that there were tens of thousands of people reading a restaurant review based on one person. It's insane. Now I pull up Yelp or Urban Spoon on my iPhone and have tons of aggregated reviews. It's just amazing and makes so much sense.The problem with newspapers is that there is only one or two voices speaking to everyone. You have the Seattle Times and Seattle P-I hobnobbing with the powers that be in the city and there is little objectiveness. This became apparent to me when I learned a TON about politics and power in Seattle by reading ONE article in the NY Times a few years ago. I was astounded because I never had read anything remotely like it in the Seattle dailies.There once again we have the web that has many independent voices via blogs, like this one, that give us lots of great news.Sorry, but it's clear newspapers have gone the way of check writing, powdered wigs, and horse buggies.Thank you for the great work on this site. I feel it is really on the forefront of what community blogs should be. I felt this when you had reported on the Ballinger Lake island fire. As Luke Burbank would say, it was awesome. Lots of pictures, links, video on youtube, someone posting that they knew of the person who was involved. Beautiful.Speaking of Luke Burbank: he had a show on Kiro radio called TBTL (Too Beautiful to Live). It was cancelled. However, it lives on via a podcast. It's even better than before: No longer do you have to sit for 3 hours to listen to the entire program with ads, weather reports, news, traffic and all those interruptions: You get 1 hour and so many minutes of just TBTL – AND you can listen to it anytime or replay what you have already heard. So, good radio may be going the way of the web or iTunes. The milquetoast stuff will live on with regular radio. Blogs likke this and podcasts are where it is at.
Newspapers are so yesterday. Seems wasteful and bad for the environment to be burning all that gas to drop off paper that may often not get read.nnI delivered the Seattle P-I for a few years, so I really did appreciate newspapers. I subscribed to the NY Times for several years and loved getting the Sunday edition.nnHowever, the newspapers are getting gutted of their personalities. The Seattle Times was okay to read on Sundays, but now it’s a shell of a newspaper without the people who used to write interesting stories.nnThe web is just much better. There was a time when there was one restaurant reviewer, John Hinterberger, for the Seattle times. It’s hard to fathom that there were tens of thousands of people reading a restaurant review based on one person. It’s insane. Now I pull up Yelp or Urban Spoon on my iPhone and have tons of aggregated reviews. It’s just amazing and makes so much sense.nnThe problem with newspapers is that there is only one or two voices speaking to everyone. You have the Seattle Times and Seattle P-I hobnobbing with the powers that be in the city and there is little objectiveness. This became apparent to me when I learned a TON about politics and power in Seattle by reading ONE article in the NY Times a few years ago. I was astounded because I never had read anything remotely like it in the Seattle dailies.nnThere once again we have the web that has many independent voices via blogs, like this one, that give us lots of great news.nnSorry, but it’s clear newspapers have gone the way of check writing, powdered wigs, and horse buggies.nnThank you for the great work on this site. I feel it is really on the forefront of what community blogs should be. I felt this when you had reported on the Ballinger Lake island fire. As Luke Burbank would say, it was awesome. Lots of pictures, links, video on youtube, someone posting that they knew of the person who was involved. Beautiful.nnSpeaking of Luke Burbank: he had a show on Kiro radio called TBTL (Too Beautiful to Live). It was cancelled. However, it lives on via a podcast. It’s even better than before: No longer do you have to sit for 3 hours to listen to the entire program with ads, weather reports, news, traffic and all those interruptions: You get 1 hour and so many minutes of just TBTL – AND you can listen to it anytime or replay what you have already heard. So, good radio may be going the way of the web or iTunes. The milquetoast stuff will live on with regular radio. Blogs likke this and podcasts are where it is at.
Newspapers are so yesterday. Seems wasteful and bad for the environment to be burning all that gas to drop off paper that may often not get read.I delivered the Seattle P-I for a few years, so I really did appreciate newspapers. I subscribed to the NY Times for several years and loved getting the Sunday edition.However, the newspapers are getting gutted of their personalities. The Seattle Times was okay to read on Sundays, but now it's a shell of a newspaper without the people who used to write interesting stories.The web is just much better. There was a time when there was one restaurant reviewer, John Hinterberger, for the Seattle times. It's hard to fathom that there were tens of thousands of people reading a restaurant review based on one person. It's insane. Now I pull up Yelp or Urban Spoon on my iPhone and have tons of aggregated reviews. It's just amazing and makes so much sense.The problem with newspapers is that there is only one or two voices speaking to everyone. You have the Seattle Times and Seattle P-I hobnobbing with the powers that be in the city and there is little objectiveness. This became apparent to me when I learned a TON about politics and power in Seattle by reading ONE article in the NY Times a few years ago. I was astounded because I never had read anything remotely like it in the Seattle dailies.There once again we have the web that has many independent voices via blogs, like this one, that give us lots of great news.Sorry, but it's clear newspapers have gone the way of check writing, powdered wigs, and horse buggies.Thank you for the great work on this site. I feel it is really on the forefront of what community blogs should be. I felt this when you had reported on the Ballinger Lake island fire. As Luke Burbank would say, it was awesome. Lots of pictures, links, video on youtube, someone posting that they knew of the person who was involved. Beautiful.Speaking of Luke Burbank: he had a show on Kiro radio called TBTL (Too Beautiful to Live). It was cancelled. However, it lives on via a podcast. It's even better than before: No longer do you have to sit for 3 hours to listen to the entire program with ads, weather reports, news, traffic and all those interruptions: You get 1 hour and so many minutes of just TBTL – AND you can listen to it anytime or replay what you have already heard. So, good radio may be going the way of the web or iTunes. The milquetoast stuff will live on with regular radio. Blogs likke this and podcasts are where it is at.