Signs of the times

We'd been having the local paper delivered for over 30 years, and went to online-only a couple of months ago. Delivery was just too expensive to justify. I'd looked at the publishing company's financials a few years ago, and we're not the only ones--what's keeping revenues up for them is printing fliers and whatnot for a wider and wider range.

Two obvious signs of problems are the size of the paper itself (getting slimmer and slimmer) and the ratio of ads to copy (larger and larger)

One I hadn't thought of is the comics. They'd been going with a half-page, of which two were popular re-runs (Peanuts and For Better or Worse). The online edition had an additional page, with a mix of popular and less so--including (would Madison subscribe to a newspaper without it?) Doonesbury.

I hadn't bothered to ask how much these subscriptions cost the newspaper, but I assume that the more popular strips cost more, the reruns a bit less, and the less popular and the drama serials still less.

They just redid their amusements pages, and pretty much everything is new. I get the sense that the comics are a bundle, and not the top-tier bundle either. If my gut reaction that the mix isn't tailored to the community isn't enough evidence: they got rid of Doonesbury. Zippy may aim for a similar demographic, but I'm not familiar enough to say, nor do I care to do the research.

It's no skin off my nose, but that's another metric to watch.

I suppose I should start examining the sports section a bit more carefully. Local sports news is something that they can't acquire just by piggybacking on the national wire services. I figure that'll be the last thing to be cut, and when I see cuts or shortcuts there, the paper will be almost dead. Maybe counting bylines?