According to this AP story, Morris Communications’ Savannah Morning News will cut out deliveries to 17 counties in GA and SC. It also goes on to say that both Jasper and Beaufort counties will be partially affected by this cut.
I wonder how, in the scheme of things, this will affect our local paper (also owned by Morris). Nobody over at the local paper will come out and admit it, but that outfit has got to be financially hemorrhaging at this point. It’s gotten to the point that accessing their website (without ad blocking software) reminds one of visiting a porn site. That’s not to say their site is trashy (or that I visit porn sites... really, my friends tell me about them, scout's honor), but it’s a bit too ad heavy for my taste.
Then again I could be wrong, free dailies are quite trendy these days, but they all suffer from the same problem. Lack of depth. If you’re going to give it away, you have to make money off of advertising alone and that means running lean. That’s the biggest problem I’ve had so far. They have this incredible resource in their website at their disposal but they don’t have enough actual reporters to take advantage of what they created. That’s some heavy irony there.
Believe it or not however it could actually be worse. This piece from 2005 leads one to believe having a free daily that’s content is driven solely by advertisers is worse than having nothing at all. Worse than that (in my opinion) is knowing what could have been, only to be resigned to the fact that it will never come. Say one thing, do another, just keep the money rolling in.
More and more I find the old cliché, “ignorance is bliss” holds true. Anybody know of a good hypnotist or have one of those Hollywood, sci-fi, mind-wipe machines? I’m ready to be happy again.
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