The newspaper you hold in your hands or look at on the Internet today is far different from the newspaper you might have pulled off the front porch 20 years ago.
There are a number of reasons for the change, including competition from other new sources such as cable TV news, a shrinking classified ad section due to Internet sites, consolidation of companies that means their advertising pages have shrunk from, say, nine pages among three companies to three or four pages for the consolidated companies.
Through all of this, newspapers have tried to provide both what readers want and what they need.
But this is no simple struggle for survival, as Dean Singleton, publisher of The Salt Lake Tribune and founder of MediaNews Group, which owns The Tribune among other daily papers, told a group of newspaper publishers in Europe earlier this week:
“Some newspapers in the U.S. won’t make it through this transition. Others will print smaller newspapers on fewer days. By my estimate, as many as 19 of the top 50 metro newspapers in America are losing money today, and that number will continue to grow. The large metros are the hardest hit by change, and they’re the most difficult to change.
“Too many whining editors, reporters and newspaper unions continue to bark at the dark, thinking their barks will make the night go away. They fondly remember the past as if it will suddenly reappear and the staffing in newsrooms will suddenly begin to grow again.
“Well, as a former journalist, I also wish for the past, but it’s not coming back. The printed space allocated to news and newsroom staffing levels will continue to decline, so it’s time to get over it and move to a print model that matches the reality of a changing business.”
(I am not one of those whining editors he talked about above. I cannot remember the last time I whined.)
He’s absolutely on point. And, at The Tribune, reporters, photographers, editors and graphic artists work every day to make the newspaper you buy worth the time you spend reading it by making sure stories are complete, graphics are easy to understand and give a fair representation of what they illustrate, photos are fresh and give a perspective to stories that adds dimension and that headlines are inviting and fair.
Sometimes, despite the great effort, a mistake gets by, but then the order of the day is to correct the mistake.
There will be more changes as we go along. Be assured – even if you do not like the change – that the changes are carefully thought out and in line with the effort to keep the paper many of you love going. We understand that THE Tribune is also YOUR Tribune.
Let me know what you think we should be doing to meet your needs.
What a jumble: Sometimes when we make a mistake, it’s a doozy.
“I found the puzzle in Monday’s paper the same one I did last week, and the ‘answers’ for Saturday’s puzzle the answers for a different puzzle from last week. Last week there were no answers to the puzzle for the day before. I hope things get ‘straight’ soon.”
There is little more frustrating than to work a crossword or jumble and find the answers the next day do not even fit the grid for the puzzle or the letters in the jumble.
Basically, this is what happened: Someone called up the wrong comic page and moved it into the rest of the day’s pages. Then it went to press.
Then the phone calls and e-mails started. We hope this will not happen again since we have instituted a routine that should prevent it.
But like all human endeavors, errors happen. We will correct them.
If you are looking for the answers, go to: www.sltrib.com/features and click on the box labeled “Puzzle Page for June 9.”
