Plainfielders who still cherish their daily dead-tree version of the Courier News have two more pieces of bad news today, neither of which you are likely to read in the pages of our local Gannett paper.
Two more?
The first two are the reduction in size of the paper to something approaching weekly competitors like the Suburban News, and the announcement that those getting home delivery will now be paying more for less.
The further two?
Editor & Publisher is reporting that Gannett will make a further cut of 10% of its workforce by year's end (see here). This will be by way of layoffs. Nice holiday gift to its workers.
And Gannett Blog (see here), the source of news and gossip about the nation's largest media company, reports that a Deutsche Bank study shows the Courier News is one of the two top circulation losers for Gannett companywide (the other is also a Jersey paper -- Morristown's Daily Record) --
"Biggest daily loser: the Courier News in Bridgewater: 26,805, down 14.7% from 31,414 a year before."It's even sadder when you realize that in 1972, when Gannett moved the re-christened Plainfield Courier out to its shiny new building on Route 22 in Bridgewater, the daily circulation was over 40,000.
There has been much buzz about whether the Courier would be outright folded into the Home News Tribune. Most recently, word has been that a move is afoot to a 3,000 square foot space across from the Courthouse in Somerville. That would be equal to a modest 30' x 100' storefront. But this news may put even that move in jeopardy.
Does the future hold a solution like that of the Christian Science Monitor, which this week announced that after 100 years of publication it is abandoning its daily print edition in favor of a weekend 'magazine' print edition and their excellent online website. Always noted for its international and national coverage, the CSM says this move will allow it to keep its foreign bureaus in operation.
The Courier, whose strength always was its in-depth coverage of the local communities it serviced, does not look to be able to use its force reductions as wisely as the CSM, since there is scarcely a reporter there who has a single community for a beat.
Which reminds me that nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum.
At a recent forum on the future of the media at Rutgers, I piped up after quite a bit of blog-bashing that one of the reasons for the proliferation of blogs was the hole left in local news coverage by the stretching thin of mainstream media (read: Courier, Ledger) resources.
And that the hunger for news in Plainfield was exemplified by the fact the no fewer than a dozen people are blogging on a variety of topics of local interest on a regular basis.
'Really? Wow!', was the reaction.
Wow, indeed.
But I still like reading me dead-tree papers over coffee.
A further circulation note: "The Top 25 Dailies, 1998 and 2008" -- The Ledger ranked 17 in 1998 (407,026) and 16 in 2008 (316,280) -- but look at that circulation drop, nearly 25%!
- Editor & Publisher: "Gannett to Trim 10% of its Local Newspaper Jobs"
- Gannett Blog: "Two NJ papers top GCI circulation losers"
- NYTimes: "Christian Science Paper to End Daily Print Edition"
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