Mark Robinson of Iowa City [pictured at the left] writes to me about the newspaper business:
Ron,
"I picked up the Iowa City Press-Citizen this morning just to prove that some baby boomers still read newspapers. My parents, who are now in and around their 80s, still subscribe to both the Marshalltown Times-Republican and the Des Moines Register, albeit out of habit. They believe that subscibing to both is a waste of money, but they can't decide which newspaper to dump. The Times-Republican used to be an evening paper so the combination of Register [morning] and T-R [evening] worked out very well in the good old days. The T-R managed to include news and photos from earlier in the day. As chief photographer at the T-R, I often was asked to grab some sparkling art before the 10:30 deadline. Not only that, I had to develop the film, print the proofs and make final prints. Well, that was 1976-77.
"Under new ownership, the T-R is a morning paper. It's a head-scratcher, for sure. How odd it seems that the T-R would compete with the Register for the morning market in Marshall County. It is true that many afternoon publications have gone away [Dallas Times-Herald, Des Moines Tribune and a host of others]. The idea of dumping a fairly successful business plan and going head-to-head with the Register seems kind of dumb.
"Perhaps the Marshalltown paper is going gangbusters, as it added a Sunday paper years ago. Not a wrap-around like the Iowa City P-C does with the Register. A Sunday paper.
"The T-R also has a sports department that is all over central Iowa. They cover Gilman to Grundy Center, North and South Tama county and all points in between. I am amazed every time I tune into the T-R website just how much regional coverage they manage, with photos and narrative. These reporters from the T-R cover those local and rural teams even though Marshalltown High School is a member of the CIML. That is an important distinction. Ron, it is astonishing that the Register does not send a reporter to those local Des Moines sporting events you speak of.
"I wonder who pays for these young reporters from Marshalltown to drive, photograph and report on every burg, hamlet and local ball team? In my view, it is the sports desk that is holding that operation together, and they are doing a hell of a job. I can't say much for the rest of T-R. Poor writing and the lack of any investigative spirit while waiting for stories to come to them in their cubicles.
"The Press-Citizen report on the French airliner crash was on page...well, it was buried somewhere around page 4.
"Keep writing,"
Mark Robinson
Iowa City
[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: Daily newspaper owners and publishers in Iowa, and not in Iowa, were convinced in the previous century that they should switch from afternoon editions to morning editions. I'm sure advertising had a lot to do with the decision. It always does. Also, owners and publishers thought there was no way an afternoon paper could compete with the evening news on TV, but now even the televised evening and night news shows [at least the local ones] are experiencing financial problems. Papers that had been sold and delivered in the afternoon were told to produce a solid morning edition, and many of them -- such as the Times-Republican -- have done it. Even with advertising and circulation declining steadily, people constantly say that the newspaper business is dead, However, I continue to feel that there is room for a local paper like the Times-Republican. Strong papers like the Cedar Rapids Gazette and the Waterloo Courier certainly are not going away. There's still plenty of good journalism in this state. As for the Des Moines Register's lack of coverage of high school sports, evidently the editors feel they don't have enough people available to cover the games. It could be the editors don't want to spend the money to hire the people to cover the games. Because of that, the coverage suffers terribly. It's ridiculous that some high school teams' football games aren't in the Saturday morning paper, and that some Monday baseball games aren't in the Register until Wednesday. I always thought that the people playing in the high school games and reading the newspaper stories about them were the readers of the future who would keep circulation numbers alive. Now that faith is being destroyed. As poor as the Register has gotten under Gannett Co. ownership, I feel there will always be some sort of Des Moines morning newspaper. It's just not as good, and it likely will continue to get worse with standout reporters, photographers and copy editors being laid off and going into other lines of work. The Register continues trying to send readers to its website to read the news, but I don't hear that people are flocking to their computers to read about what's going on. I'm not sure computer journalism, the way it is now, is a salvation for newspapers. Now newspaper bosses are looking for ways to get readers to pay for the news they read on their computers. It ain't gona work. I go back to my old line. Just like prostitutes, newspapers will be unable to start charging for something they've been giving away for years. Thanks for your thoughts, Mark].
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St. Louis Cardinals fan Mark Robisnon will appreciate this one.
You'd think Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa would have plenty on his plate these days, but now he's suing Twitter after someone created an account in his name and pretended to post updates as him.
Which reminds me that someone created a Sally Mason account on Twitter a while back, and it existed for quite a while before someone pointed out that it really didn't belong to the University of Iowa president named Sally Mason.
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I wonder if there's going to be enough room at the Greek Food Fair for Perry Washburn's pizza.
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That's it for now. I've got a sixth-grade graduation to attend.
