Recently the publisher was on an episode of ‘100 Eyes’ talking about Gannett and a company ‘restructuring’. I guess I didn’t think much about it until I heard that there may be a lot fewer people working at 10th & Minnesota soon. Usually when a major media company splits up entities (this is how I understood it explained by the publisher) this means layoffs or job transfers. No surprise, there is a new sheriff in town, and that is usually how these things go.
The word I got is that some people will be missing, some people will remain, and some people will have new titles.
It was also humorous to hear how well AL Media was doing, apparently doing so well, they have to lay some people off.
Perhaps they’ll now report about city corruption. They could gain lots of readers if they’d report how bad it’s become.
I’m thinking bye-bye Lalley, hello Ellis.
Meh, it’s local journalism. They could be winning Pulitzers and it wouldn’t get people in Sioux Falls to subscribe. Fact is, nothing much in a city the size of Sioux Falls is newsworthy to most of the population. Between the internet covering national and world affairs and local TV sopping up the human interest stories (and running websites of their own), print journalism in small cities can’t generate enough content on a day-to-day basis to be relevant to most people.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if they moved to a tabloid or Berliner format in the next few years. As I understand it, it’s easier to do full color in those formats, and it’d also lighten their day-to-day need for content.
any “big” names going to be out? i’d bet montgomery and ellis have ruffled some of the wrong feathers. which means they are the only reason to keep reading.
The argus has issues. Issues they need to address if they wish to increase market shares. Market shares they are losing with each passing Month. They could start by stopping the obedience to their corporate masters.
Classic example. They made a really big deal out of the Stampede attendance Saturday night. Big deal. 7000 of those tickets were sold for $5 apiece or in some instances for nothing. Yet the Friday night headliner “event” goes unreported attendance wise. The argus does not have the cajones to report what a loser Friday night was. Problem is, the argus only prints what t Denny says it can print….PERIOD
Will they still have Dr. Graham’s column?
I saw one of the longtime reporters at the AL talking about this on FB tonight. I guess they basically are telling employees they need to apply for several different jobs to see what happens. It was funny, because he referred to game shows and what was behind the door he chosen. Should be fun to see the ‘highly successful’ Argus Leader come out on top. Makes you wonder why the new publisher was brought in, looks like a house cleaner to me.
BTW, a couple of months ago I checked out the AL’s distribution audit from last year (a public document) You would be shocked what a city of 166K has for distribution of our only daily. Surprised they have any body working in the press room, I could print that many papers a day on the library coin operated copier.
Shit, I used to be part of a local zine that got close to the numbers.
Also, has anyone noticed that when the website used to be FREE (non-subscriber) the online poll got 700-1,000 votes a day, and since it went pay site it is like 25-45 votes a day.
Hmmm.
Need to re-hire that awful sentimentalist Terry Woster.
One thing I have noticed in the new and improved??? Argus is that on Sunday they have this new section called Home and it amounts to eight pages in the section, but in that section there is 1 1/2 pages that actually have content pertaining to recipes, decorating, etc. The rest of the pages contain ads.
I subscribed online for a while, to have full access to the content. Well, the only difference I noticed is that there were more ads (full screen with countdown seconds) than when I looked at it for free.
You can get the same content online at several places for free without the half page ads and all the pic’s of Lalley’s head. No idea why anyone would pay for this any longer.
It’s a tough time for newspapers and journalism. Our liberty suffers most. Flagrant corruption is a real problem when we don’t get honest news without biased social media or twisted advertising.