Wednesday, December 24, 2008

The Balwash Post?

According to this story in today’s Washington Post and this story in today’s Sun, the two papers will soon begin sharing news and photos in both papers continuing efforts to save money. Ironically, the stories in the two papers were written by two different reporters, Michael Rosenwald and Stephen Kiehl.

The Sun spun the news this way:

“I know journalists in both newsrooms may find this anathema," said Timothy A. Franklin, editor of The Sun, "but we're talking about daily, breaking, fairly routine stories so The Sun can use its resources developing original, unique content, which I think is a key part of our future success."

The Post spin was:

"We have great respect for The Baltimore Sun's reporting and believe adding their expertise to our regional coverage will be very beneficial to our readers," Marcus Brauchli, The Post's executive editor, said in a news release.”

The local coverage from The Washington Post has been weak since they got rid of the Howard section and replaced it with the Maryland section. I guess we can expect to see Larry Carsons byline in the Post in coming months.

With the same coverage on local affairs, I wonder at what point it makes sense to subscribe to both papers on a daily basis.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Newpapers have been struggling to survive in this age of internet news and television commentary.

2009 is going to be a difficult economic year but particularly hard on the newspapers because the trend has been away from print and paper to 010101010101010101.

The Balwash Post should probably become the Gaithersburg Gazette, Columbia Review, Silver Spring Spread, and Odenton Local. Small is important when one industry is on the decline and another one ascending. A lot of computer companies started in garages and home offices to become million dollar enterprises. Genetic research is the same becoming the hobby of silent researchers. Local banks are seeing an increase in deposits. Although national and global businesses provide the thread that ties us together in the macroeconomic world, experimentation and risk taking more easily occurs in the microworld.

Instead of uniting to become one market paper, perhaps the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun should segment their markets and do more local news ie sports, crime, events, people in the news, etc.

After all, why should we purchase a paper which provides nothing which is helpful locally? We can get out national and global news in other places. Of course, all of the coupons are helpful if you are a clipper.

HH