That’s something to see the financial trouble a paper like the Chicago Tribune is experiencing. I don’t how this affects the Baltimore Sun and Los Angeles Times.

is WGN America. For those not in Chicago, this cable channel continues to revamp to make itself a national player. I have never heard radio spots for the national service until the past few weeks. Commercials for original WGN America programming are now running. The new management team is actually trying to draw viewers to its’ programming, like a real network should.

If WGN America can finally crack the cable ratings (sorry, Cubs baseball isn’t enough) they can raise their rates — even in a down market. I’m sure they’ve been rock-bottom for years, so there is nowhere to go BUT up.

I thought it was killing the tangible delivery/reading aspect of newspapers, not the actual profession of journalism.

But i doubt thats entirely responsible for the Tribs problems

is why the “traditional” newspaper companies don’t work on something in between a daily paper delivery and the internet connectivity.

Take something like this digital reader and work with the company to develop a daily delivery system. A docking station next to your computer that automatically downloads the daily paper at 3AM while you sleep. It would be easy to take to work on the L or bus in a city like Chicago. Keep a subscriber from canceling his daily delivery while also eliminating the paper needed to print his edition.

Not to mention you could open up your subscriber base to transplanted Chicagoans who live all across the US who might like their local Phoenix, Denver, St. Louis, etc papers but want the Chicago sports section. If this was correctly, I could see myself subscribing to at least three “newspapers” to read instead of just the one I get delivered.

but so far, there’s little agreement on how to do so. Some say more local information and news that one might not get from the usual internet news sources might be one direction. It’s going be interesting to see what’s going to happen.

     As far as revenue being generated by advertising on the newspaper website, that’s part of the problem. The revenue that’s generated by the website advertising can’t match the amount that used to be generated by print side. With paper, you have nearly all the pages available to fill with advertising at different rates depending on the size and placement of the ad, day of the week etc., plus one-sheet inserts and multi-page flyers. Maybe there are ways to match the revenue but so far, they haven’t figured it out.

McClatchy bought the Knight RIder papers. MediaNews bought a bunch of papers including a few of McClatchy’s Knight Rider acquistions. GateHouse Media which owned pennysaver and weekly papers went on a buying spree and bought even more weekly papers and small and mid-market dailies all over the country. Zell and the others didn’t see or didn’t realize the magnitude of the problem.

Now, Tribune Co stock is rated “junk”, GateHouse is de-listed from the NY Stock Exchange, McClatchy is bleeding money, and MediaNews is struggling too. Everyone is cutting costs, laying off people, etc. One of the cost-cutting measures several newspapers are looking at is dropping Associated Press service. Some have already done so. Why? Too expensive. You’re a small daily with a circulation of about 25.000. You pay about $100,000 a year for AP.

… I could watch the Braves on TBS, the Mets on WWOR, or Cubs or White Sox games locally. It was great — there was at least one game every day, sometimes more.

In these Extra Innings days, when you can watch nearly every game (for a price), that seems like ancient history.