understanding the Trib

The Trib’s coverage of the Red Plan has left me slack jawed time and again. Journalism and skepticism are practically synonoymous. During the Dixon years this has simply not been the case.

I’ve read almost the same arguments before as the ones on this blog post but one of the people commenting on the post made the following point which I’ve also heard before. I don’t know if the figures are accurate but even if its off a bit in the Trib’s case it helps explain why the Trib would be loathe to make a new major advertisers (the School District) angry with it.

The average schmuck buys a paper and sees it as a product designed to inform him, the customer, about the world around him/her.

But in any financial transaction the customer is identified as the person who pays the money, and since newspapers only get 20% of revenue from subscribers this means the subscriber is not the “real” customer.

Newspapers get 80% of revenue from corporate advertisers, so they are the “real” customers. And since the corporate advertisers don’t take delivery of the newspapers it means the newspaper is not the real product.

I’ve toyed with the idea of boycotting the Trib but have decided against it because to an old fart like me that would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. I’m a news junky. But the Trib’s local coverage is suffering. Its cast off its expensive senior reporters who know Duluth better than I do. Its replaced them with kids out of college with no taproots into the community.

I get a lot of my information on national and international events from the web. That’s not true of local events. If the Trib folds who will carry this mantel?

The TV news I’ve watched has always shadowed the Trib’s headlines except for bloody events that happen after the paper has been delivered.

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