Comments on: Detroit goes with the Thurs-Fri-Sun print-edition model

By: Detroit Free Press nur noch zum Wochenende gedruckt « relevant media. now.

Detroit Free Press nur noch zum Wochenende gedruckt « relevant media. now. — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:26:38 +0000

[...] nur noch zum Wochenende gedruckt Zu den Kommentaren (AH) – Gerade lese ich bei meinem Freund Steve Outing im Blog, dass die Detroit Free Press (Gannett, Auflage: 298.000) noch im 1. Quartal 2009 nur noch [...]

By: Chuck Peters

Chuck Peters — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:00:37 +0000

Steve -

I am not familiar with the Detroit market, but we here all are watching with interest as we try to create the Complete Community Connection.

I have forwarded your comment of December 16 to our leaders here – particularly:

What I want to see as a “bold” plan by a major newspaper is to make the print edition actually train print readers that they can rely on the newspaper brand either online or on the phone in their pockets to get up to the minute news. So I’m looking for someone to publish a print edition that gets treated as a table of contents to digital offerings. I’ve yet to see anyone do more than play lip service to this with their print editions. Frankly, I’d love to have a newspaper to experiment on to take into the digital age fully. The publisher would have to give up the notion of print-first entirely and allow it to become a blatant promotional vehicle for all the amazing digital services that the brand is creating. For those still wanting nothing more than the paper, it would still serve that purpose. But even those old-time (dying-off) print die-hards would be continually trained about all that’s wonderful online and with mobile.

Thanks for keeping this conversation going!

Chuck

By: Analog Kid

Analog Kid — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:13:40 +0000

After reviewing the Freep’s and DetNews new online editions it’s easy to see why they selected this new system. It automatically generates the thumbnail and text versions from PDF files. It’s even easier to produce than their standard web articles. Unfortunately, it’s not quite fully baked and I expect readers to dislike it.

By: Steve Outing

Steve Outing — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:18:16 +0000

Lou: Agreed, it’s bold. Smart? We’ll see. What I want to see as a “bold” plan by a major newspaper is to make the print edition actually train print readers that they can rely on the newspaper brand either online or on the phone in their pockets to get up to the minute news. So I’m looking for someone to publish a print edition that gets treated as a table of contents to digital offerings. I’ve yet to see anyone do more than play lip service to this with their print editions. Frankly, I’d love to have a newspaper to experiment on to take into the digital age fully. The publisher would have to give up the notion of print-first entirely and allow it to become a blatant promotional vehicle for all the amazing digital services that the brand is creating. For those still wanting nothing more than the paper, it would still serve that purpose. But even those old-time (dying-off) print die-hards would be continually trained about all that’s wonderful online and with mobile. Because thinning print editions, the result of continued staff cutbacks, won’t be enough to keep all the old-timers continuing to pay their subscription invoices.

We’ll see what happens in Detroit. Bold, yes. Not bold enough, from what I can see from here. But they didn’t hire me or invite my input or opinion, so I don’t really know what’s up their sleeves in Detroit.

By: Steve Outing

Steve Outing — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:04:49 +0000

John: I don’t have info on Chicago free paper experience. But Trib’s Red Eye was geared toward attracting quick-hit young readers (18-24). My advice for Detroit free edition would still be to go with hard-hitting (watchdog, enterprise) stuff on non-home-delivery days, though probably short versions that drive readers online or to mobile for more. I think you could design a free print edition that appealed to a broader demographic and drove people to digital offerings, quite unlike RedEye but still designed to look contemporary enough to attract younger readers and not turn off old. Young people still want news (not just fluff, weird news, and entertainment), just not on paper. But I think there’s a chance with free editions that you’ll see some younger folks pick it up. Charge for it on newsstand: Not a chance. IMHO, whatever they do with that free edition (assuming they take my “brilliant” advice 8^) it has to be all about driving those who pick up the paper to the digital offerings, which the Detroit newspapers must train people to believe is the dominant service for the future.

By: Lou Heldman

Lou Heldman — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:16:19 +0000

Steve, I agree there will be a lot of tweaking, but I’m impressed with the boldness of the plan. No metro has presented a better idea.
Lou

By: John Kenyon

John Kenyon — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:08:31 +0000

Steve, do you know what the Chicago papers’ experience has been with their free dailies in terms of conversion to paid subscribers or the success of using those to drive readers to their web sites? Might instructive for Detroit to know that before fully moving in that direction.

I’ll be curious to see how the product is different. The value of a print newspaper is that it is either a reliable wrap up of the day’s events (in the case of a daily) or a compendium of wide-angle reporting and analysis (in a weekly). This model clearly lacks the first attribute and is probably too frequent to delivery much of the second. Can’t help wondering if this is really an improvement.