The Peoria Journal Star was really starting to slide downhill fast when I started my blog, but now it’s reached the bottom of the hill. It’s tiny. There are hardly any reporters. They don’t cover critical government meetings. Their sports scores are printed two days after the game. They don’t cover the arts. I could go on and on, and so could you.
I have many questions, many of which I probably asked before, but I’m too lazy to look back through my blog and try to find them.
- Would a startup local newspaper be viable in this day and age? Is there a market for it?
- Would you subscribe to a newspaper if it were a full-service newspaper like the Journal Star used to be back in the day?
- Could it survive if it were subscription-only (no ads, higher rates)? Or would it need to be traditionally subscription- and ad-revenue-based?
- What if it were only offered in printed form (not online)? Crazy idea, I know, but it would mean no content being stolen by news aggregators.
- What if it were only offered online? Does that diminish it? Make it seem like a glorified blog?
Going back to question 1, we know that newspaper readership and subscriptions are down, but there’s a chicken-or-egg question I have about that. My parents would still be subscribers if the Journal Star offered any value. When you cut the content and outsource your customer “service” (I use the term loosely), naturally you’re going to lose subscribers. I wonder if a good newspaper would still be viable, even in 2023, because it would offer news that no one else is covering.
What are your thoughts? Both of you who might stumble across this post–what do you think? Please let me know in the comments.
The Journal Star needs to die a slow, painful & excruciating death. They railroaded one of their own – a former employee – back in 2013; then barely even covers an OSF doctor that hid a camera in the women’s bathroom ten years later.
Cancel your subscription. Don’t buy products from their advertisers. Cut both heads of the serpent off. The PJS is an absolute POS.
A new newspaper must cover business news, which doesn’t = restaurants. It would need to employ a business reporter with actual interest in digging up information beyond that provided in a press release. He or she must possess an understanding of manufacturing, logistics and transportation, and can interpret industry lingo for the reader. Go to the monthly airport authority meetings, establish contacts with area firms to ensure regular updates and monitor social media for the industry hobbyists. And dispense with stubborn adherence to the idiot “climate change” religion.
As much as I would love for it to be otherwise, a freshly minted paper wouldn’t survive unless it had huge investment upfront and a can’t-go-wrong revenue plan. Problem is, lack of the latter is what doomed newspapers starting about 20 years ago (if not earlier).
Plus, the culture has changed away from anything print, so it would need to be online only. Taking into account Marshall McLuhan’s axiom that “the medium is the message,” today’s media just gets hotter and hotter. That means what made the newspaper truly unique — serving as a gathering place for community updates (births, deaths, marriages, bankruptcies, arrests) and developments (government boards, sports, concerts) — would be impossible in an age of social media, which won’t wait for anyone. Newspapers specialized in reporting the news from a thoughtful angle: reporters had to actually think about the angle and implications of the news before they could write it. Now the news is spattered across the internet without thought.