Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Death of a Newspaper

Over at CNet Matt Asay has a post about the future of newspapers.

This has been on my mind lately as the local rag, The Dallas Morning News, has been cutting cutting cutting content. I'm not much of a "write the editor" guy but a cut they made at the first of this year prompted my first ever missive. SportsDay used to include a listing of second and third tier area sports events. Things like college sports (basketball, soccer, tennis, baseball...) and minor league games primarily. Their response to my complaint was they needed to save space due to "these tough times". I replied asking why they didn't at least put it on the web site if space was the reason. Of course they never answered me. Their site pretty well sucks and its clear they aren't really trying to monetize its content.

I just don't see how eliminating local and timely information is a strategy to help justify my subscription cost. The only things I still find useful/interesting are:
  • Coupons - helps offset the subscription cost but if I don't subscribe I probably have a net savings
  • Weekend Guide that is published on Fridays (but omits all sports events?!?!?!)
  • Ads with local CD and money market rates (a temporary interest, no pun intended)
If the Observer would add more of the family oriented events typical of the Weekend Guide I'd definitely drop my subscription. As it is I am still pretty close to canceling as I'm sure the usefulness of the DMN is in a fatal decline.