Sunday, July 13, 2008
The Old is New: Returning to the Afternoon Model of Newsgathering?
The return of the afternoon newspaper model? And this idea is coming from some of our youngest and brightest journalists? The ones who grew up on the Internet?
How 'bout that ...
Here's the background before the story: A long time ago in a land far, far away, a nation had a lot of afternoon newspapers. These newspapers 'hit the streets' at lunch or in mid-afternoon, culminating in a late edition that you would read at home after dinner.
That was sure a long time ago. Afternoon papers have largely disappeared. The trend has been going on for decades; just look at a story from way back in 1991. Most folks want their news first thing, or so it seemed when print papers ruled the roost.
Afternoon papers were definitely a different animal. I worked for an afternoon newspaper in Salinas, Calif., for several years. You'd write or finish your stories in the morning, and turn them in before noon. That's way different from a morning newspaper, where stories were submitted to an editor usually by dinnertime and published 12 hours later.
There were advantages and disadvantages from a news perspective; bear in mind this was long before folks relied on the Internet for news. An awful lot of events happen or culminate late in the day. It can be many hours before the news at, say, 4 p.m. on one day arrived in our afternoon paper in the early afternoon the next day. And our paper competed against morning papers in Monterey and the largest big city, San Jose, that could have the news earlier.
At the time, I covered the courts system. That was back when newspapers actually had full-time reporters covering the courts system, if you can believe such a thing. A lot of juries hand down their verdicts in the late afternoon or early evening, to get home for dinner. So what would happen is that high-profile verdicts would be described on TV, morning papers would follow the next day .. and then our afternoon paper came out.
But here's the advantage I had: What working at an afternoon paper meant for me was that I had the evening and morning to study the implications or the verdict and gather reaction to the verdict before I had to turn in the story. So we at the afternoon paper liked to think that while our afternoon paper did not have the news first, it had more context.
But so went the dinosaur. Our afternoon paper converted to a morning paper while I was there to try to compete against the onslaught of the other morning papers.
So here's why this all comes to mind ... The Spokesman-Review in Spokane gave several of its newest reporters the chance to study the future of newspapers. The S-R has been suffering, like so many other local papers, from the pain of the industry. It's a big, nationwide problem. Here's just one example: The jobs that I held in journalism between 1987 and 1989, and then 1993 and 1999, have since disappeared: courts reporter at the Salinas paper, editor of The Lakewood Journal and business and technology editor of The Olympian. There are examples all over the place. Newspapers are in trouble.
For further context, I'd encourage you to read the Spokesman-Review editor's post, but especially read the actual report. The young journalists call for a return of the afternoon newspaper model. They say it gets news out earlier and more effectively. They list other advantages as well. The print edition of the paper would still be published in the morning.
'Course it's what to early to say what, if anything, will happen to these recommendations. But everyone who ever worked at an afternoon paper that went out of business or shifted to morning publication .. well, we will all be smiling at what could be a cycle of history.
Forward this post
How 'bout that ...
Here's the background before the story: A long time ago in a land far, far away, a nation had a lot of afternoon newspapers. These newspapers 'hit the streets' at lunch or in mid-afternoon, culminating in a late edition that you would read at home after dinner.
That was sure a long time ago. Afternoon papers have largely disappeared. The trend has been going on for decades; just look at a story from way back in 1991. Most folks want their news first thing, or so it seemed when print papers ruled the roost.
Afternoon papers were definitely a different animal. I worked for an afternoon newspaper in Salinas, Calif., for several years. You'd write or finish your stories in the morning, and turn them in before noon. That's way different from a morning newspaper, where stories were submitted to an editor usually by dinnertime and published 12 hours later.
There were advantages and disadvantages from a news perspective; bear in mind this was long before folks relied on the Internet for news. An awful lot of events happen or culminate late in the day. It can be many hours before the news at, say, 4 p.m. on one day arrived in our afternoon paper in the early afternoon the next day. And our paper competed against morning papers in Monterey and the largest big city, San Jose, that could have the news earlier.
At the time, I covered the courts system. That was back when newspapers actually had full-time reporters covering the courts system, if you can believe such a thing. A lot of juries hand down their verdicts in the late afternoon or early evening, to get home for dinner. So what would happen is that high-profile verdicts would be described on TV, morning papers would follow the next day .. and then our afternoon paper came out.
But here's the advantage I had: What working at an afternoon paper meant for me was that I had the evening and morning to study the implications or the verdict and gather reaction to the verdict before I had to turn in the story. So we at the afternoon paper liked to think that while our afternoon paper did not have the news first, it had more context.
But so went the dinosaur. Our afternoon paper converted to a morning paper while I was there to try to compete against the onslaught of the other morning papers.
So here's why this all comes to mind ... The Spokesman-Review in Spokane gave several of its newest reporters the chance to study the future of newspapers. The S-R has been suffering, like so many other local papers, from the pain of the industry. It's a big, nationwide problem. Here's just one example: The jobs that I held in journalism between 1987 and 1989, and then 1993 and 1999, have since disappeared: courts reporter at the Salinas paper, editor of The Lakewood Journal and business and technology editor of The Olympian. There are examples all over the place. Newspapers are in trouble.
For further context, I'd encourage you to read the Spokesman-Review editor's post, but especially read the actual report. The young journalists call for a return of the afternoon newspaper model. They say it gets news out earlier and more effectively. They list other advantages as well. The print edition of the paper would still be published in the morning.
'Course it's what to early to say what, if anything, will happen to these recommendations. But everyone who ever worked at an afternoon paper that went out of business or shifted to morning publication .. well, we will all be smiling at what could be a cycle of history.
