I guess we should stop picking on Dallas' Only Daily Newspaper

The Morning News' parent company released its first quarter earnings yesterday, and the news was even worse than most expected -- an almost 11 percent decrease in earnings, an estimate that circulation has decreased by more than 10 percent, and no optimism that things are going to get much better anytime soon.

One can guess at the reasons for this. Some of it is the problems that newspapers are having in general, and some of it is unique to The News: Its arrogance and a dull and uninteresting product. Whatever the reasons, we're almost certainly going to see more budget cuts, including layoffs, and that will just accelerate the cycle. The story hints at that: "We are diligently seeking efficiencies across the company," which is corporate speak for clean out your desks. There is also an increasing chance that, despite a poison pill stock structure, Belo could be bought by someone from out of town.

I realize the bosses at the Belo building could care less about what I have to say, but I hate to see any newspaper -- even The News -- suffer. So here's some free advice: Just cutting costs isn't going to help. You have to give people a reason to read the paper, whether that's better writing, more attractive design, or stories that they actually want to read. You can't just say, "Here, suck on this," like you've been doing for the past 16 years. Those monopoly days are long gone.

Comments

[Rick Wamre]

The image of someone at Belo saying "Here, suck on this" has tears streaming down my face in laughter; although having now had a good laugh, I don't think arrogance is the main problem. Based on my little corner of the world, the cost of providing hyper-local, interesting and competitive journalism for readers who have hundreds of media choices every day just keeps getting higher and higher. It may have been possible to earn 20-25% returns on investment in print journalism at one time, and it may be possible again one day, but I think in the interim, anyone earning more than about 10-12% had better start looking behind them to see who's catching up. That's still not a bad return, but it's not what Wall Street has been conditioned to expect, and every time someone takes out the machete to pop the return back up to 20%, they wind up cutting away the core of the product and getting even farther away from their expected return. Journalism is and always has been about connecting with people rather than getting rich; those of us who work in the industry pretty much know that the money will be good but rarely great. That's the same attitude media owners are going to have to get used to for awhile.

[Farinata X]

Here's what's wrong with the News in a nutshell: Ed Bark, Phil Wuntch, Jerome Weeks, David Dillon, and Gerry Fraley don't have jobs. Alan Peppard does.

[Kyle Rains]

Farinata watch what you post here, you may end up being published in the Advocate!

I used to live for the moment I would sit down with the morning paper and coffee. If I woke up early, I couldn't go back to sleep knowing that paper was on the sidewalk outside.

Now most the stuff seems so recycled and old. Sometimes two days old. Then there are the retreads from the NYT and other sources. And no one at the DMN seems to be from Dallas nor know much about it. They never get the neighborhoods right. Add John Anders to Farinata's list.