The Value of Caring vs Making Money
Do you think newspapers ever sit there and wonder why they are slowly dying? I would doubt it as the last two I have worked for are too caught up in sacrificing any and all genuine quality and value of the publications they produce to make a quick dollar.
It’s interesting how such large players in the media industry could be so ignorant. Your readers are the same as the customers walking into a store. Without them you are nothing. The customer is always right.
So why is it that newspapers produce so many publications that are utter crap? 
Something that hardly nobody picks up to read. The majority of special sections I see produced are essentially a giant advertisement and provide nearly no real valuable reading content.
That goes to show that they don’t really care. They are in the survival mentality and staring at their feet so they don’t trip and go down. What they should be doing is looking at the path ahead and building a reputation of quality reading publications.
If you care about what you print, you’ll make sure it’s quality and it will show. People will read it and people will care (especially small communities). But when you care more about making money, it will show and people won’t like you.
So give a crap about what you produce and as a byproduct, you’re going to make money. But produce crap and as a byproduct you’ll ultimately fail.
This way of thinking is quite obvious in the blogging world. Trends come and go quite quickly on the internet and the print world could take a few lessons from the online world.
Open your eyes newspapers and get with the program. 
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Its not that they don’t care, they have less journalists, more to cover, and horrible deadlines. A lot of the time if your a good PR person you can write 70% of the article for them and they’ll publish that because they just don’t have time to research and write their own because it has to be handed in at 5PM.
The web has brought down the cost of this in general and now the average rift-raft are able to produce content and news for very little money.
Simon Koldyk’s last blog post..Posting Exploits
It sounds like you’re referring to publications produced by the news department. The last two papers I’ve worked at have a large majority of publications produced by the advertising department in which the concern for readability is close to zero.
Please don’t take offense when I say this but I view what you said as an excuse. If they really did care they would change the way it was done so that it is done right and so that it will be a quality product once again.
I do understand the struggle the news departments go through but there are so many problems that could be solved if the upper level management were just a little more willing to be different and take at little risk.
Risk is scary but you never know just how much you’re capable of without pushing the boundaries.
Yes I was; but, I meant the reporters care not the actual people the could change anything. Even if they did, I don’t know if a new way could actually make any money for them. Print media is expensive.
Simon Koldyk’s last blog post..Simplebucket Rocks
magazines do it? why not a mix between newspapers and magazines? Print media is definitely expensive but newspapers are declining and will continue to do so, so why not make an attempt at bringing something new to the table?
by the way, thanks for the comments!
It’s nice to hear what other people think about this stuff.
Magazines have a whole different audience and time frame that you can run with a small amount of staff, and they are having a hard time making it as well. My favorite magazine Business 2.0 closed up show a little while ago. The articles you write for a magazine are coming out in 3 months so you get to do a lot more feature stories that may not always be time relevant so you can have a lot more time.
Simon Koldyk’s last blog post..Simplebucket Rocks