The future is digital.
We’re holding the Monday edition of the Wisconsin State Journal in our ink-stained fingers. Starting next month, we’ll have to get our Packer fix on-line, for the October 27 issue of Madison’s only daily newspaper will be the last committed to printed paper on a Monday. More days will follow, it says here, until news print disappears entirely.
Another casualty in local journalism’s struggle for survival. Since 2004, the United States has lost one-fourth – 2,100 – of its newspapers. This includes 70 dailies and more than 2,000 weeklies, according to the University of North Carolina.
Madison is not unique. Lee Enterprises, which publishes the State Journal, has been particularly hard hit. NPR/PBS (that’s another story!) reports that the company experienced a net loss of more than $30 million so far this fiscal year, compounded by that massive cyber attack. All Lee Enterprise newspapers are reducing their print schedule, including papers in Buffalo NY, St. Louis MO, and Richmond VA. The huge Gannett chain went to six days of print for its 120 newspapers three years ago. Gannett owns the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the dailies in Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh, and seven other towns. The chain closed its Milwaukee printing plant and now prints its 11 Wisconsin newspapers in Peoria IL! The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is shutting down its printing presses entirely after the first of the year to go exclusively on-line.
The weak link of print, we’ve always thought, is that delivery man burning gasoline to find that one subscriber for every street and forgetting to bag on a rainy day.
Give me rewrite
Blaska remembers standing before the editor of the Waukesha Freeman while he reviewed our magnum opus for the next day’s edition. The review completed, Jim Huston commanded, “Put clean paper in your typewriter.” His way of saying rewrite!
Cutting and pasting required actual scissors and glue — lumpy, congealed glue from glue pots. (Never wondered until this moment whose job it was to replenish the glue.) The man at a machine Rube Goldberg must have invented, the Linotype, retyped the reporters’ efforts into (well) lines of type — made of lead!
The Capitol Newspapers plant at 1901 Fish Hatchery Road is a mass of concrete but when those presses revved up on the first floor the building still rumbled. Someone once commented, “They’re printing money down there.” We did three editions. The electronic news cycle is 24/7. Even then, we’re talking the mid 1970s, Madison’s newspapers were computerizing, to the chagrin of the old-school letterpress compositors, their skills obsolete. TV news was already sounding — 30 — for afternoon dailies.
Change, the one constant
Envied the wire editor, as he was known, because he could get news from Washington D.C. to L.A. — from all corners of the globe — on his blinking green screen. Never occurred to the young farm reporter that in a couple decades that news could be available in your pocket.
Did not realize until recent times that the humble want ad drove newspaper revenue. Rent an apartment, sell your car, find a job, hire a worker, announce your divorce — take out a want ad. Pages and pages of small print.
Photographers retreated to the dark room to bathe their raw film in chemicals. Seem to remember the AP teletype machine shaking and ringing like Hector Salamanca in Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul. For that matter, who has reporters specializing in agricultural news any more? Newsrooms have shrunk along with subscribers and revenue.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: AM radio is in trouble, too, due to competition from Sirius and your smartphone’s iTune collection. The legacy television networks are losing eyeballs to cable, podcasts, and streaming content. Hellz bellz! Is anyone more endangered than the late-night comedian?
12 responses to “Stop the presses”
If only their “Badgerland Values” junk mail would suffer the same fate.
As worthless as a trump campaign promise.
As worthless as “Every Politicians” campaign promises.
I corrected that for you.
Please seek mental health.
I cancelled print log time ago because I go tired of wet papers, missed deliveries, and papers still being delivered when I canceled delivery for vacation. However another blow for Lee is many of my republican friends have cancelled the on line delivery as well due to the 99% progressive bias of the paper, and 100% on the editorials. I really only get the on line paper for the local news, however that is also very biased, so I am seriously considering cancelling my on line subscription as well. The only print paper I read now is the Wall Street Journal, it is the only one I know of that prints articles on “both sides” of the issues in the news. Since I winter in the Tucson Arizona area the only daily paper there is the Lee owned Arizona Star which I also used to subscribe to, but dropped it as 75% of its pages are identical to the Wisconsin State Journal in layout and content. Only difference is the local news and the advertisements. Don’t need to pay for that duplication.
Today’s Wisconsin State Journal would make William T. Evjue proud. I am still able to “subscribe” to my neighbors e-edition. When she dumps her print edition, I’ll have to try to poach the Squire’s edition.
Put out a crappy product and get crappy results. It’s as simple as that.
GOOD RIDDENCE.
Reporters became journalists became Journolist.
‘Honest’ they told us, ‘We only call balls and strikes.’
Last newspaper to endorse a Republican candidate was the Chicago Tribune in 1952.
Re: balls and strikes:
“Major League Baseball (MLB) will introduce the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System starting in the 2026 season, allowing teams two challenges per game to dispute ball and strike calls made by human umpires.”
I think this will be good. It’s been working in tennis for many years.
Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing to apply to the local newspapers claims?
Loved the Hector Salamanca reference! As a long-ago, high school journalism scholar the state of “Journalism” these days turns my stomach.
Very true. I barf a little in my mouth every time I hear Hannity talk.
Great post. We lose a lot from the downsizing of newspapers and the removal of journalists from the roles they serve in our state and nation. When it comes to being an ‘intrepid reporter’ I need think no further than Dee Hall at the WSJ. Who will ever forget her solid reporting and relentless hunt for the truth when it came to the caucus scandal at the Wisconsin Capitol? I was a part of her investigation series and found her desire to not only know the facts but to actually understand the unwritten rules of the partisan campaigns taking place in the statehouse during the workday. Because of her constant professionalism at getting to the heart of the story the antics of ‘politics as usual’ had a bright light cast upon it for the whole state to see. Where would a story like this fit into the world of television news where hours and hours of research is needed, and a visual grabbing element is needed?
Regarding AM radio, a medium I have loved since boyhood (hearing of Harry Truman’s death the morning after Christmas 1972 on the radio I had been given as a present) and then working at a station in Door County as young man, I ask your readers to think about Hurricane Helene. Following the massive and horrific destruction from Hurricane Helene. North Carolina station News Radio 570 WWNC broadcast a days-long marathon of live programming about dams and finding family members and evacuation routes, etc. In other words, local radio matters.
I am very dismissive of automated programming or radio hosts from the other side of the country. There is no way that someone in a studio from Dallas, Los Angeles, or Baltimore can understand the way winter driving problems hamper the beltline, how economic pressures impact the hotel development decisions here, or what the mood is really like on the Capitol Square during contentious times in state politics. To know any of these things–along with a boatload of other issues–means there needs to be a local person at the local radio station offering a local perspective. AM radio matters.