The Bad News Blog.

Note: I probably shouldn't be telling anyone about this because it's an 'inside the company' deal, but this is my blog and as far as I'm concerned, my publisher or editor don't read my little ol' blog. If you are my publisher or editor, don't read any further, thank you. :)

So here's the thing, I'm fully aware that I got into the newspaper business at a bad time. Subscriptions have gone down, advertising and revenue dollars have gone down. But I love my job, I love everything about it, even down to the people that call and complain that I put their son getting arrested in the paper and the city officials that try to sugar-coat everything they say. But the fact and truth is, every single newspaper out there is in trouble.
Today, we at the paper were informed that we were to take furloughs- a five-day unpaid vacation of sorts. This is not as bad as it sounds. In fact, it is a lot better than the pay cuts or layoffs we could have experienced. But it's still not good news. The paper is in so much trouble that they can't afford to pay employees for the time it takes to get the paper out. We have all been working unpaid overtime and they still can't pay us for the time we spend to get a good paper out.
The funny thing is, readership at our paper has actually gone up. Yesterday, we single-copy outsold a paper in a neighboring county. But 10,000 people buying 50 cent papers still doesn't equal a day's worth of advertising. People are reading the paper, but companies can't afford to advertise. And if they can't afford to advertise, my company can't afford to pay me and I can't afford to shop at your store. It takes money to spend money.
Our Web site hits have gone up so much the company has had to purchase more bandwidth for our site alone. But Web site clicks only generate revenue if we can get companies to advertise on the Web site. And companies are not spending on advertising.
As bad as this all sounds, I think it says a lot for CHNI that we've lasted long enough through these hard times and have been managed so well that we've only been asked to take 5 days unpaid. Our CEO and publisher have told us they expect things to get better by June and for advertising to be back where it's supposed to be by this time next year.
I'm not sure if that will happen because this 'money crunch' has gotten people saving money and it'll take a while for people to get back in the habit of spending it.
I say all this because I don't think people realize how much work it takes to get the news out- even to those 'news' Web sites that I'll admit, I read more than the newspaper. All of us- not just the newsroom- all of us have been working way more than what's legal in unpaid overtime. It's an interesting business because without the news, there would be no newspaper. But without ads, there would be no newspaper.
The truth: It Sucks. Hard. But most newsrooms are filled with people who are dedicated to getting you accurate news every morning and as long as nice CEO's and publishers do their jobs right, we'll still be doing the same thing when the economy turns around.
And if anyone has any ideas on how to convince a trucking company that they absolutely should spend half of their advertising budget on a Web site, let me know.