OPUBCO / Oklahoman Business Practices

[Rover]

This shouldn't surprise anyone. USA Today outsells the NY Times. This has been a trend for a long time. People don't want to pay for a large daily paper and certainly aren't willing to pay for well researched extensive and expensive articles. And, if the articles don't prove their already existing notions, they will just find an online alternative that gives them the "truth" they want.

Face it, as a society now we favor an inch deep and a mile wide over an inch wide and a mile deep. Now we may even be favoring and inch wide and an inch deep.

And, for anything that is over 15 minutes old, it is old news. Our attention span is short, short, short. We post short notes on sites. We don't even email anymore...we text. We take our "news" from tweets where we allow anyone to claim "truth" .... the writer is the fact checker and the accused gets to write their own "news".

[stlokc]

This shouldn't surprise anyone. USA Today outsells the NY Times. This has been a trend for a long time. People don't want to pay for a large daily paper and certainly aren't willing to pay for well researched extensive and expensive articles. And, if the articles don't prove their already existing notions, they will just find an online alternative that gives them the "truth" they want.

Face it, as a society now we favor an inch deep and a mile wide over an inch wide and a mile deep. Now we may even be favoring and inch wide and an inch deep.

And, for anything that is over 15 minutes old, it is old news. Our attention span is short, short, short. We post short notes on sites. We don't even email anymore...we text. We take our "news" from tweets where we allow anyone to claim "truth" .... the writer is the fact checker and the accused gets to write their own "news".

Rover...you might be more cynical than I am, but I don't doubt that there's truth in what you've just written. The thing is: every time I have this conversation with somebody, whomever it is, we recognize that reality that you've expressed but we all lament it. Every one. And I believe my friends and family and colleagues when they say that they really miss a lot of the old hard-hitting journalism and they struggle to find ways to counteract what has happened with our press.

So I think there is a market out there, even if it's smallish compared to the "lowest common denominator" folks, that crave a more sophisticated type of news.

[Pete]

Keep in mind the Oklahoman has done precious little investigative journalism, so this recent change will have little impact in that regard.

[Rover]

Rover...you might be more cynical than I am, but I don't doubt that there's truth in what you've just written. The thing is: every time I have this conversation with somebody, whomever it is, we recognize that reality that you've expressed but we all lament it. Every one. And I believe my friends and family and colleagues when they say that they really miss a lot of the old hard-hitting journalism and they struggle to find ways to counteract what has happened with our press.

So I think there is a market out there, even if it's smallish compared to the "lowest common denominator" folks, that crave a more sophisticated type of news.

There is a market, but doing good journalistic work across the broad spectrum papers have traditionally covered is a VERY expensive endeavor, on top of which printing and distribution is increasingly expensive. It was a mass medium that is being reduced to specialty niches. Those aren’t newspapers, they are newsletters, or free entertainment type papers.

[Rover]

Rover...you might be more cynical than I am, but I don't doubt that there's truth in what you've just written. The thing is: every time I have this conversation with somebody, whomever it is, we recognize that reality that you've expressed but we all lament it. Every one. And I believe my friends and family and colleagues when they say that they really miss a lot of the old hard-hitting journalism and they struggle to find ways to counteract what has happened with our press.

So I think there is a market out there, even if it's smallish compared to the "lowest common denominator" folks, that crave a more sophisticated type of news.

Oh, and newspapers always got the money to operate from paid advertising. So, the more narrow the niche, and the less verified users of definable demographics lowers rates and ad inches. This is why they spiral into mediocrity or disappear.

[mugofbeer]

All the best to the future of the Gazette.

[okatty]

Interesting to see changes that are already being made - for example, Sports/Business/Classifieds are all in one section now rather than 3 separate ones.

[Pete]

It will be interesting to see how the Sunday paper looks with this new mandate.

[TheTravellers]

https://www.thelostogle.com/2019/02/...om-front-page/

[stile99]

What, they finally realize even divine intervention isn't going to save them?

[Rover]

All the best to the future of the Gazette.

With all due respect, the Gazette is great for what it is, but it doesn’t take the place of a comprehensive local newspaper. They are apples and oranges. If Gazette tried to cover everything like a true local paper they would have the same financial issues.

[mugofbeer]

With all due respect, the Gazette is great for what it is, but it doesn’t take the place of a comprehensive local newspaper. They are apples and oranges. If Gazette tried to cover everything like a true local paper they would have the same financial issues.

It certainly doesn't. The city needs both and it will continue to be a struggle for the Oklahoman as long as people refuse to pay for it. Denver is down to 1 paper and it may have fewer employees than the Oklahoman.

[soonermike81]

I’m one of 18 remaining print subscribers! Sweet!

[Pete]

The genie is out of the bottle. The time to adopt subscription models was 20 years ago; now it's too late.

Also, the signs were on the wall for newspapers before the internet, but like any monopoly (American cars, cable TV come to mind) they were too busy basking in hubris and gouging customers and advertisers with 30-40% profit margins to care.

And like those other businesses, papers made just wheelbarrels full of money but those profits were almost all taken out by already rich owners instead of reivesting it in the business.

History has shown that when you take advantage, customers will run as soon as they get another option. The Oklahoman and most other papers have decades of bad will working against them and most still have no idea how to put together a successful business model.

And with a local paper like the Oklahoman, why would you pay for information that you can get for free elsewhere? They aren't the NY Times, breaking new investigative stories. You can find better local, business and development news here, better sports coverage -- even HS sports -- all over the web.

BTW, their reporters are out there begging for subscritions to support 'local journlism', yet they are no more local than an Applebees: Out-of-state owner (now a ruthless NY hedge fund)and the CEO extracted $54 million for himself last year while slashing newsrooms. They employ some local employess, but a good number are out of state (for the Oklahoman: copy editors, graphics, many admin functions; and all the profits are all shipped out) just like a chain restaurant. Should we all be only eating at Chili's because we like some of the waiters? I'd rather go to Cheever's and it doesn't hurt that their owner lives here and continually reinvests in our community.


As a side note, I'm very, very bullish on the Gazette. We expect to make a very good profit this year after inheriting a situation similar to the Oklahoman only we don't charge our readers for anything; never have and never will.

Print is not dying, there are just lots of papers doing it wrong.

[sgt. pepper]

With all due respect, the Gazette is great for what it is, but it doesn’t take the place of a comprehensive local newspaper. They are apples and oranges. If Gazette tried to cover everything like a true local paper they would have the same financial issues.

So Pete, are you disagreeing with Rovers statement here?

[Pete]

So Pete, are you disagreeing with Rovers statement here?

It's hard to make a daily paper work but it's also hard to make an alternative weekly work; both have been failing at about the same rate.

What I would say is that some will fail simply because they are poorly managed, not just because they are in a challenging business.

Almost all forms of business have seen radical change over the last several decades but there are still plenty in almost every category doing well and some very well.

Change brings opportunity and the truly successful seize it rather than complain and place blame.

[David]

This is the Times, so it's a tad unrealistic to compare their situation to local OKC papers, but I thought this was an interesting report:

The New York Times Co. Reports $709 Million in Digital Revenue for 2018

[hfry]

https://www.thelostogle.com/2019/02/...-hot-dog-cart/
I'm guessing Lackmeyer won't be using his twitter to promote her hot dog business anytime soon. The Hot dog lady also claims that KOCO shot a video with her yesterday to air last night but other bricktown people got involved and ran a puff piece instead. Not a good look for any side here imo.

[Rover]

It's hard to make a daily paper work but it's also hard to make an alternative weekly work; both have been failing at about the same rate.

What I would say is that some will fail simply because they are poorly managed, not just because they are in a challenging business.

Almost all forms of business have seen radical change over the last several decades but there are still plenty in almost every category doing well and some very well.

Change brings opportunity and the truly successful seize it rather than complain and place blame.

So, you don’t think there is more of a true challenge to run a comprehensive daily newspaper with point by point delivery than a weekly entertainment or limited scope weekly delivered to a controlled set of locations?

I love what you do here and am excited about the direction of the Gazette under your leadership, but to ignore the challenges papers like the Oklahoman, etc have is a bit disingenuous in my humble opinion.

[Pete]

Not a good look for any side here imo.

One side is the lead business reporter for the state's largest news organization; the other is a lady that runs a late-night hotdog cart.


This sort of crazy has been going on for years and it says an awful lot about the Oklahoman that they continue to allow it, especially under the name of a section of their publication they frequently promote.

[Pete]

So, you don’t think there is more of a true challenge to run a comprehensive daily newspaper with point by point delivery than a weekly entertainment or limited scope weekly delivered to a controlled set of locations?

I love what you do here and am excited about the direction of the Gazette under your leadership, but to ignore the challenges papers like the Oklahoman, etc have is a bit disingenuous in my humble opinion.

I'm not ignoring their challenges at all, and I understand them very well.

In fact, I'm kicking myself for not making a bid for the Oklahoman (had no idea they were open to a sale) because I believe there is still a lot of upside to quality print journalism strongly supplmented with new media content.

And more importantly, I've come to believe that although they have some good people, they generally do a poor job and many of their business practices are actually outright bad for our community.

[Dob Hooligan]

I'm about 60, so I want to read a print replica. Read it on my iPad and take the paper version to work for customers to read in the lobby.

I'm beginning to think that the Oklahoman is the sports section and Steve Lackmeyer. And Lackmeyer has become a little full of himself, IMO. As Berry Tramel nears my age he is turning into a grumpy old man. As good as he is as an OU football historian, he is terrible as an NBA commentator. To use an old church phrase-he has the head knowledge, but no heart knowledge.

I think the Oklahoman can be better, but sometimes the siege mentality takes over an industry and they can't recover.

[mugofbeer]

I'm not ignoring their challenges at all, and I understand them very well.

In fact, I'm kicking myself for not making a bid for the Oklahoman (had no idea they were open to a sale) because I believe there is still a lot of upside to quality print journalism strongly supplmented with new media content.

And more importantly, I've come to believe that although they have some good people, they generally do a poor job and many of their business practices are actually outright bad for our community.

It would have to be a money pit at this point, though. Also, backing some of what you have said in earlier posts, the Oklahoman gauged advertisers unless you were one of the few constant large scale advertisers. My employer used to be a massive national newspaper advertiser. I asked the Sr. VP in charge of why OKC was the largest city in the country without a branch office of the company, he said that plainly, its the newspaper. At that time, 20 years ago, the Oklahoman had the highest add rates, per capita, in the country. My Dad used to be a good friend of the Gaylords until I finally convinced him that they and their paper were badly damaging the city, business was avoiding coming here, they were greedy and gauging advertisers. The paper was far too right wing, far too much religion, far too tolerable of goons in the legislature. I'm not sure if you had bought it, you could save it without a huge amount of cash to burn up front.

[Pete]

^

Another example of gouging... Things like classified ads and obituaries.

My mom passed away in the late '80s and I was absolutely shocked how much the Oklahoman charged for an obit. But what was I to do? Her friends had to know about her death and service and there was no other option in town. I don't remember the price just that it seemed completely unreasonable (especially at a time when you are dealing with funeral arrangments and big medical bills) but like any other monopoly, I had no choice. I never forgot it and that's exactly the type of bad will -- and there are a thousand more examples -- that people carried around with them and then lept at the earliest opportunity to stop supporting them.


But here is something much more dramatic to consider...

Oklahoma has more valuable natural resources per capita (lots of oil and gas and less than 4 million people) than almost any state yet we are near the bottom of every measure of well-being: poverty level, education, health stats, incarceration, smoking, on and on.

The question is, WHY??

Why on earth is Oklahoma down there with the likes of Mississippi and West Virginia, which are both extreme outliers due to their unique histories and economies? Why is our closest neighbor and another state with the same natural resources, Texas, lightyears ahead in almost every way?

You could argue very strongly that the Oklahoman drove almost all the policies and attitudes that have led what should be a wealthy state to be a poor, mismanaged one. They have always been the largest driving force behind politics and policies. And they are still doing it. They are and always have been deeply in bed with the weathly elite and oil barons, promoting their desires at the mercy of the state in general.

I'm not saying the Oklahoman and Gaylords are 100% responsible for all the state's problems, but blood is absolutely on their hands.

[Scott5114]

This is the Times, so it's a tad unrealistic to compare their situation to local OKC papers, but I thought this was an interesting report:

The New York Times Co. Reports $709 Million in Digital Revenue for 2018

The New York Times is making a lot of money right now because of its reputation for investigative journalism. Same goes for the Washington Post—I've got a WaPo subscription, despite having been to DC exactly once. They tend to be one of the ones that break political stories, and I like being able to quickly check if whatever rumor going around is bogus or not by seeing what they have to say about it.

If there were a paper in OKC digging around doing the same sorts of investigative journalism at the state level, I would hope it would be successful and would subscribe (especially if it was something like the $4/month I pay for WaPo) because at the moment I'm lacking a good source on state-level coverage. That's why I was pretty excited when Pete bought the Gazette, given his knack for putting on the investigative-reporter hat himself in the past. Not sure if that's the direction he's hoping to take the Gazette, but it's definitely an opening the Oklahoman has left for someone else to fill.