Tag Archives: Peoria Journal Star

Peoria Journal Star

First ‘First in Print’ disappointing

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The Journal Star rolled out their very first paper featuring articles that appear in print at least a day before hitting the website. The idea is to differentiate the printed product from the web product, and offer paid subscribers some benefits free web surfers don’t get.

So what stories did subscribers get that web-only readers didn’t? These three:

  • Only three times since the World War I and II Memorial was dedicated in 2007 have memorial pavers been offered for sale. Only 600 remain, so get yours before they’re gone.
  • In light of the recent wave of violence, Peoria police have temporarily reinstated a gang intelligence position that was cut as part of sweeping cost saving measures.
  • Peoria students’ artwork will appear on Illinois Department of Transportation calendars. KJS

Of those three, only one is an actual news story. The memorial pavers is a glorified advertisement. The Kids Journal Star (KJS) artwork is typical refrigerator gallery fare — not something you’d rush out and buy the paper to see. So really, there was only one news story that was held back from the web this morning.

As a subscriber who favors “First in Print” in concept, all I can say is: “big deal.”

Based on today’s content alone, it appears to me that “First in Print” is a Gatehouse Media directive, and the powers that be at the Journal Star aren’t too enamored with the idea. So they’re designating mostly fluff stories as “First in Print” so they can tell their corporate bosses they’ve complied with the directive, while at the same time not actually adding any value for subscribers. If they really wanted to add value, they’d designate “Word on the Street” (in fact, they’d designate all their local columnists) as a “First in Print” article.

Perhaps it will get better tomorrow. But for Monday, June 28, I’m unimpressed.

Peoria Journal Star, State Journal-Register

Springfield paper offers exclusive content ‘first in print’

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The State Journal-Register is now publishing some of its content in print before it publishes it on the web. The lag time is unspecified.

Called First in Print, the move aims to increase the value of the print edition for readers, many of whom pay to read the newspaper. Many of the articles appearing first in the print edition will appear on the newspaper’s website after a delay….

The First in Print effort is a change from how the newspaper traditionally has treated publication of news items. For years, nearly all of the newspaper’s content has been placed on the website where it could be read for free.

“That meant that readers of the print edition, who pay for information, got less advantage for their investment,” Broadbooks said. “This change means that those readers who pay for the paper have the opportunity to see select features first. We believe it enhances the value of the print edition.”

The Springfield paper is owned by GateHouse Media, the same company that owns the Peoria Journal Star. I wrote to the Journal Star’s managing editor John Plevka to ask if his paper will be following suit. I received no response.

Personally, I think “First in Print” is a good idea. Right now, I receive no added value as a subscriber of the Journal Star. Non-subscribers get all the same content for free over the internet, while I’m paying over $200 a year for it. So why shouldn’t I cancel my subscription?

Come to think of it, I might just do that.

City of Peoria, Kellar Branch, Museum Block, Peoria County, Peoria Mayor, Peoria Park District, Taxes

PJS Editorial pretends City asset giveaways have nothing to do with budget crisis

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A couple of responses to today’s Journal Star editorial. First, there’s this:

Even Mayor Jim Ardis, who never saw a tax increase he didn’t greet with contempt, seems to have come to the realization that City Hall probably can’t cut its way out of this.

That’s not exactly accurate. Mayor Ardis happily voted to increase sales taxes by 1% within the Hospitality Improvement Zone downtown.

And then, there’s this:

As a result [of the need to make more cuts to city services or raise taxes to balance the budget], a fair number of locals are venting, understandably, though some of them paint either-or scenarios that do not exist. Indeed, the choice is not a recreational trail vs. police officers, or a museum vs. firefighters. The vast majority of the funding for those quality-of-life projects comes out of dedicated revenue streams controlled by other local governments – the park district and county, respectively, with the help of grants. Those dollars couldn’t be used to put more badges on the streets even if the council wanted to. Like them or hate them, those projects — one of them initiated by a successful citizen referendum — are not what created this operating deficit.

First of all, this framing of the argument is obviously a “straw man.” I know of no “locals” who have made the assertions they are countering. Clearly “either-or scenarios” as painted here do not exist. But to imply that these projects have absolutely no relation to the City’s fiscal crisis is also false.

Yes, construction of the rail-to-trail project is funded by the Park District, but it’s only made possible by the City of Peoria giving away a $3 million asset to the Park District for one dollar. The City just threw away $3 million (or at least $750,000, the last bona fide offer to purchase the rail line) while at the same time they need to cut $800,000 from this year’s budget. Why didn’t they put the land up for sale to the highest bidder? Putting this land into the hands of a rail carrier and working with them to woo new manufacturing business to Pioneer Industrial Park would have resulted in raising the tax base in Peoria through new business and new jobs.

Then there’s the Sears block, which has lain dormant for over a decade now because the City won’t enforce deadlines on redevelopment agreements. This is prime real estate that could be parceled off and sold, which would provide a couple of things: income from the initial sale, and on-going revenue from sales and property taxes by the businesses who locate there. Instead, the City is sitting on the land indefinitely, until they can finally give it away for nothing to be used by a non-profit organization that will be a perpetual drain on the county taxpayers.

In addition to the lost opportunity to generate revenue with these assets, taxpayers now have to pay for their development and maintenance in perpetuity. That means we have to pay higher taxes to support these drains on the economy. And that exacerbates the City’s budget woes. Since taxes are high because of increases by other local governments (to which the City directly contributed, as shown above), it puts pressure on the City not to add to the tax burden. And that means the City continues to try to balance its budget by cutting — police, fire, public works, etc.

The Journal Star is simply trying to rationalize its support for non-essential pet projects by using straw-man arguments to dismiss valid criticism.

See also Billy Dennis’s post in response to today’s PJS editorial.

Kellar Branch, Peoria Journal Star

Journal Star shamelessly defends secrecy in government

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The Journal Star Editorial Board had this to say about the recondite Kellar Branch Corridor Corporation, created by Tom Leiter:

Leiter’s group was never formally hired by anybody. But it’s not as if he acted without the knowledge of the governments involved, whose elected representatives had by majority vote publicly endorsed this rail-to-trail conversion, and who could have asked him to stop at any time over the last couple of years. Some feel he gave the impression that this effort was being done pro bono; he says he did volunteer his personal time, as did others, and that his organization is merely recovering its expenses, which includes work done by his law firm and by outside counsel. The risk of borrowing the money for the escrow account is his group’s, not local taxpayers. Leiter got the job done here when all other efforts at breaking the gridlock had failed.

The whole editorial is one long ends-justifies-the-means argument, with this paragraph being the apex. According to the brain trust at 1 News Plaza, there’s nothing wrong with having a third-party organization do the public’s business in private — so private that not even our elected representatives knew what was going on. It’s okay to have that organization then come to the public body and ask for reimbursement of $1.25 million in expenses after the fact, when the line is abandoned, the railroad companies paid off, and it’s too late for the elected representatives to say “no” without putting the whole plan into legal limbo. Basically it’s okay to have third parties obligating taxpayers to the best deal they can secretly haggle.

…as long as the newspaper agrees with the end result, of course. It’s not hard to imagine how much ink would be spit onto the editorial page in outrage had this kind of chicanery been done for a project with which the newspaper disagreed. I guess when the newspaper is opposed, it’s corruption. But when the newspaper agrees, it’s just “the way the sausage is made.” Ho-hum. It’s just the way politics works. Nothing to see here; move along!

The fact is, this is bad public policy. Even trail supporters see it. As much as they want the trail, they aren’t in favor of obligating taxpayers to an underhanded payoff to get it. The public’s business should be done in public. Sure, there are times when councils have to go into closed session — but it’s still the elected public representatives who are deliberating in those instances, and any final action to expend money still has to be done in open session. What we have here is a deal that was done not by elected representatives entirely in secret, with the final price tag revealed at the end of a process that is past the point of no return.

The Journal Star has sunk to a new low in defending this kind of deceitful tactic. It doesn’t matter if they’re for the trail or against it, this process is wrong and should not be condoned. They’re a newspaper, for crying out loud. The fourth estate is defending secrecy in government! Journal Star Editorial Board, have you no shame?

Peoria Journal Star

More local content getting axed from Journal Star

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I must have missed this announcement in the paper, but apparently the Journal Star is no longer going to review local theater productions. A letter to the editor today from Steve Bortolotti, President of the Peoria Players Theater Board of Directors, asks the Journal Star to reconsider:

I think I speak for many in the Peoria area’s community theater groups when I say how saddened I was to hear the Journal Star plans to no longer offer theater critics’ reviews of local non-equity theater productions in the Sunday Journal Star…. If the paper’s decision is an economic one, I would suggest that the Journal Star hire freelance writers to cover the local theater scene. In any case, I hope the paper reconsiders its decision to eliminate theater critics’ theater reviews altogether.

That means no more reviews of Corn Stock Theater or Peoria Players Theater productions. Today’s “ARTSplus” section was a whopping three pages (perhaps they’ll soon be renaming it “ARTSminus”). I guess the National Endowment for the Arts director Rocco Landesman can be forgiven for thinking there’s not much playing in Peoria now that Peoria’s only newspaper of record is cutting its coverage of local theater. It’s just one more step in the Journal Star’s apparent quest to alienate all their readers and reduce circulation. That’s the darndest business plan I’ve ever seen.

General News

Trends in online newspaper access

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Starting in June, The Times of London is going to start charging a subscription fee for online access to their newspaper content. Subscribers to the print edition of the paper will get complimentary online access, but web-only subscribers will have to pay £2 ($4 USD) per week. That’s roughly one-third the price of a print edition subscription.

“Paid content is the only way that we are going to see a sustainable economic model for quality journalism,” explained Times Editor James Harding.

Mr Harding added: “Saying that our journalism is worthless and dumping it free online is not a viable economic model.” Even were The Times to double its online readership over the next five years the revenue created through non-subscription means would be too low to sustain a quality newspaper, Mr Harding said.

Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, added elsewhere in the article, “We are proud of our journalism and unashamed to say that we believe it has value.”

They aren’t the only ones setting up pay walls. The New York Times announced earlier this year, “Starting in January 2011, a visitor to NYTimes.com will be allowed to view a certain number of articles free each month; to read more, the reader must pay a flat fee for unlimited access.” The Financial Times has a similar setup. Those who register can get 10 articles for free every 30 days, but must pay a subscription fee of $3.59 per week for unlimited online access. The Wall Street Journal charges $1.99 per week for online access only, $2.29 per week for a print-only subscription, and $2.69 per week for both.

A recent article in the Online Journalism Review says this is the way all newspapers will eventually go because it’s the only viable business model. “You don’t get free gas from a gas station. You don’t get free meals from a restaurant,” observes the article’s author, Gerry Storch. “So why is the newspaper industry the only one in America that is expected to give its product … in its electronic version … away for free?”

“Giving away information for free on the Internet while still charging 50 cents to $1 for the print version of the paper was one of the most fundamentally flawed business decisions of the past 25 years,” says Prof. Paul J. MacArthur, who teaches public relations and journalism at Utica College. “Newspapers told their paying customers that the information truly had no value. They told their paying customers that they were suckers. Why would anyone pay 50 cents for something he or she can get for free? This poorly conceived and obviously flawed strategy has helped put the newspaper industry into its current financial condition and hastened the demise of many publications.”

I’ve been asking that same thing for years now about the Peoria Journal Star. Why should someone pay $247 per year for the paper’s content (which is continually shrinking, by the way) when they can get the same content for free online? What kind of a business plan is that?

Storch gives his prescription for the newspaper industry: “[E]xcept for the ‘Big Four’ national players, newspapers will not survive unless they 1) convert out of print and totally into the Internet, 2) confine themselves to local news and, most importantly, 3) charge for it.” Overall, I agree with this assessment. However, I don’t think they need to get out of print totally. The market for the printed newspaper will continue to shrink, but will remain at least a niche market forever.

But Storch is correct that a focus on local news — and charging for it — is a must. No one is going to buy the Journal Star for its reprinted Associated Press content. But people will buy the Journal Star for local news. You don’t get local news from the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or even the Chicago Tribune. That’s the local paper’s competitive advantage, and they need to capitalize on it.

That’s the only way I can see for online newspapers to succeed in the long run. The only future for the free model is dwindling content and bankruptcy.

Peoria Journal Star

Journal Star no longer reporting bankruptcies

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The Journal Star is no longer going to print personal bankruptcies in the paper. Let’s see, they no longer print all births, only those that people want in the paper. They charge for obituaries. Now they’re not going to print bankruptcies. They’ve cut so many staff members they can cover little more than “low-hanging fruit” types of news. The paper is thinner than it’s ever been, yet they’re still chipping away at staff and content.

I guess this is just another part of the Journal Star’s plan to slowly fade away into oblivion.

Peoria County, Peoria Journal Star

“Word on the Web” has Urich news conference video

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The Journal Star recently started a new blog based on John Sharp and Karen McDonald’s Monday column “Word on the Street.” The blog is called “Word on the Web,” and so far it has been very good. New content is added regularly, and the information is much more timely than the weekly print column. Case in point: today’s post on Peoria County Administrator Patrick Urich’s press conference. It includes video of the whole meeting, which was basically a question and answer session about Firefly flickering out. Very informative.

City of Peoria, Peoria County, Peoria Journal Star

More historic quotes about Firefly

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“In terms of company stability, Caterpillar owns 35 percent of Firefly, and Cat is a company that does its homework. This battery technology is unique and promising enough that Firefly had little trouble raising $20 million in private equity. Company officials figure 80 percent of that money is spent locally, so there’s economic spin-off.” –Journal Star Editorial Board, May 22, 2007

The Journal Star said the risk was worth taking, and endorsed the loan guarantee. I just thought this quote was notable because there’s this attitude in Peoria that if Cat invests in something, then it must be a sure thing. Obviously, Cat didn’t get as successful as it is by making a string of poor investments, but the Firefly bankruptcy does show that Cat isn’t perfect, and their investment is no substitute for municipalities doing their own due diligence. Then again, Cat did tip its hand even in 2007. A May 23, 2007, article carried this ominous statement: “Although Caterpillar Inc. owns 35 percent of Firefly, it wasn’t clear Tuesday why it wouldn’t guarantee the loan.”

“The Firefly package was being worked on for a number of weeks between Firefly, the county and the city,” Ardis wrote in an e-mail. “The proposal went through various stages and changed a number of times. It would have been difficult to update people on financial discussions when they were fluid and evolving into what was the final proposal. Once made public, there wasn’t anything hard to understand about the deal.” –Mayor Jim Ardis, quoted in “Word on the Street,” Peoria Journal Star, May 28, 2007

This was Ardis’s defense of “dropping the deal late on the public — [and] his council colleagues — and pushing the vote” with very little deliberation and without any policy discussion. The whole article is interesting. It recounts the story of how former Mayor Dick Carver was in town to talk to the City Council about the Kellar Branch rail-to-trail initiative, and during his stay here, he set up a meeting between Mayor Ardis, Rep. David Leitch, and president of G&D Integrated Joe O’Neill. They met at Le Peep restaurant for breakfast, and, “Over toast, these four men toasted a commitment to finding a solution that would keep Firefly Energy Inc. in Peoria.” Firefly moved into the former Foster & Gallagher building on Galena Road — a building owned by O’Neill’s company — and “O’Neill also hopes his Morton firm will eventually secure contracts with Firefly to build the high-tech core components that would then be shipped to battery plants in Missouri and Ohio,” the paper reported at the time. Leitch was a VP at National City at the time, the bank that provided the loan to Firefly.

“Ultimately, this is new ground for Peoria County.” –Peoria County Administrator Patrick Urich, quoted in Journal Star, June 1, 2007

The news article added, “But he [Urich] told the committees it was a worthwhile investment because the company has promised to keep its headquarters here and may manufacture in Peoria its high-tech components, parts that would then be shipped to battery plants in Missouri and Ohio.”

“I see it as one of the safest loans that we could make. If I had the money, I’d make it myself.” –County Board Chairman Bill Prather, quoted in Journal Star, June 10, 2007

If it were really that safe, why did National City require the City and County to guarantee the loan? If it were really that safe, why didn’t Caterpillar guarantee the loan? Well, now we know.

“I’m happy to be doing what I can to get them these defense dollars. In the end, I want them in Peoria. That’s going to be the icing on the cake for us.” Then-Congressman Ray LaHood, quoted in the Journal Star, June 10, 2007.

LaHood helped Firefly get millions in defense contracts. Icing on the cake? What cake?

“This is the highest and best use of this money that we have.” –Peoria County Board member Allen Mayer, quoted in the Journal Star, June 15, 2007

Note to future board candidates: Mark this quote for your campaign literature.

Before someone else says it, I concede that hindsight is 20/20. But I’m more concerned about another proverb: Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Will our elected officials take this very hard and expensive lesson to heart and stop using taxpayer money for risky private ventures?

Peoria Journal Star

Psst! Hey, Journal Star staffers, past and present!

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Have you heard about this story?

Cathy Gilbert, the managing editor of a small newspaper in South Carolina . . . not only quit, she also took her entire staff of employees with her to start a competing paper in Manning, S.C., according to a WLTX, a TV station in Columbia.

Just imagine if all the Journal Star employees — those still working as well as those who have been let go over the past several years — all banded together and started their own cooperative newspaper to compete with the Journal Star. It’s so crazy it just might work. Who wouldn’t abandon the GateHouse-Media-ravaged Journal Star for a superior new paper with all the knowledge, experience, and contacts of established beat reporters, editors, printers, sales agents and webmasters? Who wouldn’t want to pick up a paper that is locally-owned and customer-focused? Who wouldn’t want a paper with enough reporters to adequately cover the tri-county region and beyond? I think the community would flock to it.

A revolt would be good. GateHouse can’t compete against you. Start having some secret meetings, put a business plan together, and set a date for the big departure. Peoria deserves a better newspaper than GateHouse is providing. The men and women at the Journal Star deserve a better employer than GateHouse. Don’t say it can’t be done. You can do it!