I asked readers last week what they thought about the possibility of The Bee’s placing ads on various section fronts of the paper, such as on the cover of Sports or Business.
I posed this question in the context of the paper cutting newsprint costs by dropping pages from sections such as Forum and the Sunday comics, either permanently or temporarily.
More broadly, the dual effort to reduce costs and raise revenue is whipsawing the entire newspaper industry as it struggles with tepid advertising, declining circulation and competition from the Internet.
Just four days ago, for example, the Dallas Morning News announced it was reducing its editorial staff about 17 percent by cutting 85 newsroom jobs via a voluntary buyout package.
Some of the country’s largest papers, such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Los Angeles Times, have begun or soon will begin placing advertisements on their section fronts, some even on the front page.
While there are no current plans at The Bee to do likewise, several of the three dozen or so readers who responded said they would reluctantly acquiesce to section-front ads. All of them, however, drew the line on placing ads on the front page.
“Do section-front ads offend me? Yes. Offend, annoy, anger,” said reader Judy Stabler. “Remember, the reason I get a newspaper is for news, not advertisements.”
“Ads on the section fronts? You might as well — everyone seems to be selling out,” wrote Neville Loberg of Sacramento. “Less space in the Forum section? I think I’ll go read the opinion pages of the four other newspapers I have ‘bookmarked’ (on) my Internet browser. Perhaps I don’t need a hard copy of the paper after all.”
And while most readers said they understood the reality of the paper making its budget, they were critical of The Bee for failing to tell them where and why specific cuts to the product were being made.
“I commend The Bee management for recognizing the need for change but agree with some of my fellow subscribers that it would have been very upfront to have explained the need to us ahead of time,” wrote Bill Oates, a retired accountant from Georgetown.
“You should put a notice on the front of the paper that the customer is not getting the full product that they expect, or lower the price,” said Stephen J. Lewis of Pioneer. “How about you buy a gallon of gasoline, but find out the seller lowered the octane? Your editorial page would scream foul.”
Reader Bruce Snyder of Sacramento said he was troubled by what he believes could become a trend.
“Of course, the worst scenario is one that I’m sure we’ll see very soon: both ads on section fronts and permanent diminution of editorial content,” he wrote in an e-mail. “At that point, I may very well be writing the proverbial ‘cancel my subscription’ letter.”
A handful of readers thought the paper was doing well, despite the reduction of pages, which they don’t like.
“In your discussion about the placement of advertisements, you neglected to point out one feature of The Bee that I think deserves recognition: It does not run ads on the back page of the front section,” wrote John Stanton in an e-mail. “On any newspaper, the back page of the A-section is highly desired by advertisers, and The Bee could make big bucks by selling off back-page space. But in this case, the readers come before the advertisers, and Bee readers should appreciate that. I do.”
Earl Ehrling of Orangevale offered a dose of pragmatism.
“Of course, economics govern all of our lives,” he said in a letter. “The Bee is no exception. Yes, we do notice when the Forum is shortchanged, or when ‘Opus’ comes to us in four-point (type). However, life is mostly compromise in one form or another. Few of us are lucky enough to end up with a whole loaf of anything. The New York Times arrives on our doorstep each morning, along with The Bee, and, really, in terms of quality, if not quantity, The Bee holds its own pretty well.”
For some, a smaller paper is good, at least temporarily.
“From your column Sunday, it sounds like most readers are upset when part of The Bee ‘shrinks.’ Not all of us,” explained Don Petron. “We who consider it our civic duty to read most of the paper every day welcome an occasional ‘shrink’ in our daily duty. So go ahead and ‘shrink’ whenever necessary. I, for one, welcome the break. (And it will save a few trees.)”
The humor extended to Walter E. Wallis of Palo Alto. I jokingly raised the specter of companies sponsoring sections of the paper that relate to their business, such as the Gatorade Sports section, if not sponsoring the entire paper. “And, he asked, why not have a sponsor for the whole paper,” wrote Wallis. “He means, of course, someone besides the DNC.”
On an unrelated subject, several readers called or wrote to compliment the paper for its Aug. 4 front-page package of stories that described the individual lives of the 13 people — most of them elderly and living alone — who died during the recent, unprecedented, hell-on-Earth, 11-day heat wave.
Too often, the paper and the news media in general are guilty of short attention spans, of covering a breaking story frantically for a few days and then just as quickly dropping it as they move to the next “big one.”
This time, the paper did the right thing. It went back and pieced together the life stories of people who were more than faceless weather statistics, but rather living, breathing people who died in stifling silence.
It was a job well done, and readers noticed.
