Diggings

A blog by Toby Dayton

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Archive for September, 2009

Dailies Love Digging Their Own Grave

Not surprisingly, there’s been a ton of news of late surrounding the daily newspaper industry, but the summary of it all is that as bad as things are for the dailies, these businesses are incredibly gifted at finding new, imaginative ways to make things even worse.
• Newspaper revenues are down 29%, and papers around the [...]

More Chaos Surrounding The Dailies & The Emerging New News Models…

It’s been a very interesting past few weeks with a bunch of stories relating to the death of older news and journalism models (daily newspapers) and the emerging models that hope to replace the dailies. Below are a few of the stories that have caught my attention…
• On the old model front, Gannett has cut [...]

The Dumbing of America…

One of the most compelling and critically important side stories (or maybe it is THE story and the business stuff is secondary) related to the death of the daily newspaper is the impact on our communities, our society, and our democracy. There are a wide range of opinions about what will happen to the vacuum [...]

Answers For Newspapers Are Starting To Emerge

Taking a few weeks off from posting the latest headlines concerning the plight of the dailies has created a massive backlog of items to list. I am not sure if the pace of noteworthy events is accelerating or if it just seems that way due to my short hiatus, but I have about 3 blog [...]

Oracle of Omaha Offers Opinions On Obvious

The headline is not a critique of Warren Buffett in any way, I simply could not think of a word for newspapers that started with an ‘O’. In any event, Warren Buffett weighed in on the state of daily newspapers this past weekend at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting and articulated about as grim an [...]

Seattle Daily Abandons Print To Go All Web

I’ve been saying for months that we have entered the final chapter of the daily newspaper story, and if there was any doubt as to the validity of that proclamation, those doubts were erased today when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer announced today that it will be abandoning its printed publication and moving entirely online. It is [...]

NYT Must Be Reading Diggings…

It has to be the case that the New York Times is reading this blog. The story they ran yesterday on the front page was my #1 prediction for 2008. Either that or they’ve been reading Alan Mutter’s blog, or tweets from themediaisdying or any of the other countless blogs, articles, industry analysts, pundits, experts, [...]

San Francisco Enters The Fray

In December of 2007, I made some predictions for 2008, one of which centered around a major metro market in the U.S. losing its daily newspaper altogether. While the timing may have been a little early, there is little doubt that it will come true in 2009. The only question that remains is which city [...]

Who Has The Best Ideas For Saving The Dailies?

The pace of stories about appearing everywhere about the death of the dailies is reaching a fevered pitch, and everyone, it seems, has an opinion about what will and will not work to save the newspapers from an inevitable demise. The following are just a sample of the deluge of stories over the past few [...]

Star Tribune Succumbs To The Inevitable

It was only a matter of time. The Star Tribune declared bankruptcy last night, ‘filing a voluntary petition under chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy code.’ Following the Chicago Tribune’s similar announcement last month, it was the 2nd major metro daily to file bankruptcy in the past 6 weeks, and more will undoubtedly follow. Seattle [...]