By Joel Thurtell
What do you call a daily newspaper that prints itself three times a week?
Thricely Free Press?
Threely News?
(Make that the Twoly News: Employees of the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press were told today that home delivery of the News will end on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. The News doesn’t publish Sundays. At the Free Press, home delivery will end Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. The Free Press will be delivered Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.)
I’m told by someone who, as of the moment, still has a job at one of the “dailies” that the logicians at Gannett, owner of the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, believe they will save oodles of money by stopping the presses four days a week. Print versions of the paper will still be sold at 20,000 vending machines and stores statewide. Internet versions of both publications will continue.
Presumably, the bosses expect to keep collecting advertising revenue, though somewhat reduced.
Reduced by 40 percent, according to this version of managerial thought processes.
Since 60 percent of ad money comes in on Thursday, Friday and Sunday, why not print only on those days, tossing the paper onto the Web the remaining four days?
That, I guess, is the logic.
Somewhere, I missed a step.
Fact: 5-10 percent of print newspaper ad revenue comes from the Internet. It follows, then, that 90-95 percent of ad money comes from the print paper.
At best, the thricely plan calls for waving goodbye to 40 percent of 90 percent of the Detroit paper’s revenue — the part that comes from printing the News and Free Press.
Did I just say “paper”?
I’ll have to retrain myself.
Still looks like a 36 percent cut in revenue.
What will replace it? Does management have a plan for increasing Internet revenue?
Will labor and material cost reductions offset the loss in ad mney?
I’ve heard a rumor that bosses plan to lay off 300 people.
I have NOT heard rumors about plans for improving Internet profits.
They decided to give their product away for free on the Internet back in the 1990s. That move would be hard to undo now. At least they can charge for the paper product. On they Internet, they’ll be giving their “dailies” away for free four days a week.
Of course, it means they’ll need fewer printers, mailers, delivery people. Will the cuts extend into the newsroom? Will editors feel the slash?
I’m reverse engineering the bosses’ logic here, so bear with me. The plan, such as it is, depends on selling 298,243 real ink-on-paper issues a day for the Free Press and 178,280 for the News. At the Free Press, 200,110 of those sales are papers delivered to homes. The News has 97,483 home deliveries a day, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But the key question is this: How many of those roughly 300,000 home subscribers will keep taking a “paper” that comes only three times a week?
And how much will they be willing to pay for it?
If circulation shrinks because of the move to thricely publication, won’t the “papers” have to reduce their ad prices?
The term “downward spiral” comes to mind.
Of course, none of the above is official. I’ve been writing about the thricely plan for months. It’s been picked up by the Wall Street journal and New York Times. But we won’t know for sure what the plan is till the top honchos — David Hunke and Paul Anger — make announcements to union leaders and employees.
That’s supposed to happen this morning.
Stay tuned.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
