More on the Reader and the myth of "hyperlocalism"

So the new owners of the Chicago Reader, Creative Loafing (ugh), have announced that the entire production of the paper is moving to Atlanta. The entire Reader production staff, along with its award-winning art director, will be out on the streets within six weeks. Additional rumors have the paper's printing being outsourced from long-time printer Newsweb in Chicago all the way out to North Carolina, where it will be trucked 14 hours cross-country. Once they're through, it's a safe bet that a good amount of the editorial will be produced out-of-town as well--after all, you don't have to live in a place to review a movie, right?

These moves away from Chicago by a company that claims to be "pioneering the opportunities offered by convergent print, web, and new media applications" (ugh) underscores why my bullshit detector goes up every time I hear someone talking about "hyperlocalism" as the savior of newspapers.

Hyperlocalism--for the three of you that don't already know--is the latest buzzword for locally-focused content that's combined with community-driven content. When you hear the investment brokers and money handlers talk about it, they always dredge up the example of junior-high school sports scores--traditional newspapers can't dedicate the space to print them, they say, even though plenty of parents want to know them. That junior-high sports scores have no real bearing on anyone's life (junior-high schoolers notwithstanding), and that real local news doesn't ever seem to register in analysis hasn't stopped the hyperlocalism bandwagon from picking up steam.

But there's always the question of production: Who's driving that wagon? In typical "convergence" fashion, it's big media companies, silicon valley startups, and cheerleaders from among the technoscenti. There's often not a damn local (let alone a hyper one) among them. And so hyperlocalism is bound to fail the same way the Creative Loafing (ugh) run Reader is bound to fail: "Local" is a word that still means something--you can't replicate it from 1,500 miles away, no matter how much money you spend.

Chicago Reader, RIP

So the venerable Chicago alt-weekly announced today that it's been sold to a Tampa-based alt-weekly publisher with the unfortunate name of Creative Loafing. That the new owners have entered a market much larger than their largest holdings (Tampa? Sarasota? Jesus...) seems like a bit of a kick in the sack for the Reader, which has been kicked quite a few times already.

Once the end-all be-all for what was young and happening in Chicago, as well as one of the flag bearers for high-quality (if, let's face it, sometimes quite boring) alt-journalism in the country, the Reader has been on a slow, painful slide from the top for years now. It was a slide started by the introduction of "The Red Papers," competing commuter rags introduced by the Chicago Tribune and the Sun Times (who started their Red Streak for no reason other than to toss something in front of the oncoming onslaught of the Trib's Red Eye). The Red Papers undercut the Reader's ad rates and promised a much larger circulation (and, good god, much worse writing). The entrance of Time Out Chicago further stretched the ad market as well as took the legs out of the Reader's editorial coverage, offering a more readable look at the goings-on in the city (the Reader's attempt to freshen up before TOC's arrival, an odd and confusing redesign, didn't help matters from the start).

But the biggest nail in the Reader's coffin--and the nail being driven into all the other alt-weeklies in the country--was Craigslist. Back when I worked at the Reader (in the production department, which I think it's now safe to say I tried to unionize during my two years of employment) the classifieds commanded the largest and most labor-intensive section of the entire paper. It had an entire floor of sales reps and production on the section would have its own night. It brought in millions of dollars a year--dollars that were then able to be spent on "real" journalism elsewhere in the paper. It was the lifeblood of the paper, as it is for many alternative weeklies around the country.

The Reader even adapted to the Internet quickly--their online classifieds were the go-to page for apartments and jobs in the city for years. But they charged for those listings, and they found it impossible to compete with the Craigslist juggernaut (and frankly, how could they?). The classifieds slowly shrank, the final insult being the awkward incorporation of the entire classifieds section into two different parts of the paper. What was once a four-section paper suddenly became three--I'm sure the new owners will fold it all down to one soon enough.

And so it is that the once-mighty Reader is absorbed by a C-list alt-weekly chain, not even good enough for a New Times buyout, let alone a purchase by the Tribune. The owners I'm sure were well compensated, but those that work the long, thankless hours at the paper now face very uncertain futures. It's hard being an object lesson, as every other underpaid employee at a weekly is watching to see what happens to them, and I'm sure they will weather this storm just as poorly as you can imagine (my thoughts go out to each and every one of them).

boom, with a view

Punk Planet magazine ended this week. It was the thing I worked on my entire adult life. It was the thing that I built from nothing with my bare hands. It was the thing that taught me everything I know about journalism, about business, and about how those two things can sometimes work together. It was the thing that allowed me to tell stories I never could have dreamed possible. And it was the thing that broke my heart, here, at the end of times.

It's been a hard week--it's much easier to write about these sorts of things when it's not about you--but it's been one full of reflection. While it's too close still to really begin to dissect the whys and hows of it all, I will say this: We held a magazine that was seemingly destined to fail together for 13 years; we committed acts of journalism far beyond what our budget, and often our skills, should have been capable of; and we put every ounce of our selves into all 80 issues. What more can a person ask for, ultimately?

all the ads shit to print

Publishing 2.0 has a very good analysis today of the New York Times ad numbers and how print ads are down by double-digits year-to-year and while web ads are up, they're not up up.

It's an astounding analysis when you really dig through the numbers, and it paints a pretty clear picture that while things are down in print ad-wise and things are up on the web ad-wise, the two don't come close to balancing out. According to Scott Karp's read on the numbers, print ad sales in May 2006 vs May 2007 declined by $19 million while online ad revenue rose by only $3 million (a 21.4% jump, but still).

Those numbers don't spell an easy future for the Times, or for anyone looking to make a painless transition from print to web. Sure, I'd give my right eye for that $3 million in ad revenues, but they've got to be digging through a lot of couch cushions trying to locate the $16 million they just lost.

NOTE: I'm not used to reading numbers in the millions (oh independent publishing!), and thusly an earlier version of this post erroneously reported the numbers wrong. It also included a funny joke about interns and coffee.

what will we do when the money runs out?

Venerable and influential publisher McSweeneys this week announced that they're broke. Stuck with massive debt from the PGW meltdown--the same disaster that sent Soft Skull to Winton, Shoemaker & Co (hi Richard)--McSweeneys has taken the move made famous by Top Shelf Comix and appealed directly to their readership to purchase backstock.

I have to say that I was surprised when I heard the news--McSweeneys puts out a public air of such confidence that I'd never expect them to write a letter like this. Which means it's really drastic.

Having had to write a letter like that myself, I can say it's not an easy one to write. It's humbling--you hate to admit that there's trouble--and, more importantly, you know that it's a one-shot deal--you can't do something like this twice--so you've got to make sure that this is really the time you need to throw out that hail-Mary pass. If you've established trust with your readers (and if anyone has, it's McSweeneys), it'll work to get you out of debt, but it's a temporary fix. Appeals to your readers can't be a business plan. Speaking from experience, if you don't have the next step lined up, the money's going to run out again before you know it. Here's hoping they do.

The McSweeneys letter is another sign that the trouble that befell magazine distribution in 2005/06 (though we're all still seeing the effects still today) is creeping into books at a time when the industry is truly vulnerable. And the letter is also a sign that even the most respected are on shaky footing indeed.

I wish them the best over there. The world would be a worse place without their amazingly quirky books to look for on the shelves. Support them if you can, and hope they've got Plan B ready to roll.

A funny thing happened on the way to monetization

So in light of the comments in the post below, I've decided to put my money where my mouth (er... fingers) is (er... are) and have signed up for an AdSense account to see just how the future of revenue streams on the Internet works. (I recognize and accept that that last sentence made me sound like your great aunt who just signed up for "the hotmail.")

So far, the sign-up server was down for an hour and a half and, after signing up, it takes one to three days to have your site approved, neither of which seem particularly cutting-edge or user-savvy, so I'm going to chalk one up into the skeptical column for now.

I don't expect to make any money off this site, by the way, this is more for the experiment/learning experience of actually serving these ads than it is the ¢72 that I stand to make from it. Because while I, like Whitney, firmly believe that children are our future, the rest of the world seems to point to Google instead.

10 things minus the big one = a bankrupt future

An interesting blog post has been making the rounds lately 10 Obvious Things About the Future of Newspapers You Need to Get Through Your Head. The author makes some good points--specifically around the fact that it's neither Google's nor Craig List's fault that newspapers are suffering right now.

However, what he leaves out is how all of these changes effect the financial landscape for publishers (buried in the comments the author admits as much when he says that web ads haven't replaced the income lost from print ads) and, until that answer can be as simply and effectively stated as the rest of his list, well, the list is a bit moot.

I've said it other places but the problem with this transition from print to web isn't the skillsets of reporters, isn't whether or not RSS feeds are valid, isn't a 60-second newscycle, but instead how all this stuff gets PAID FOR. And nobody has a good answer for this. I'm convinced it's possible--I mean, hell, simply cutting out the paper and printing cost alone helps get you part of the way there--but until there's a solid solution, lists like these only treat the symptoms, not the disease.