As the Great Detroit Experiment begins, the industry owes them for acknowledging the obvious. As Lou Mleczko, president of the Detroit Newspaper Guild Local 22, reported:
"And (Detroit Media Partnership CEO David) Hunke said, if we don't do this, the
current model is unsustainable. So he'd rather take the calculated risk
of going to a new format -- rather than sit back and do incremental
cutbacks."
Unsustainable. In other words, the business model is broken. The cracking we've been hearing are the default roars and whispers coming out of the companies and the lenders. Tribune's bankruptcy made a hole in the ice and now the idea of doing business as usual in 2009 seems increasingly unthinkable.
So Detroit, our newspaper Detroit, is going green. Green as in aiming for a sustainable, profitable model. Green as in fewer felled trees and more pixels. Green as in new green tech fresh, in line with the times with the change in Presidential Administration. Expect many more papers to soon follow the trend, as it appears that about half of the top 50 papers are now unprofitable.
It's a startling plan, even though we expected it. We'll debate the details and the chances of it working, but one fact is clear: A major American city will essentially see its daily newspaper(s) disappear. The Free Press and the News, as print products, won't completely disappear on certain days of the week -- a one-section product will be available on the streets -- but the institution of the daily newspaper is disappearing in Detroit.
What we know about the Detroit plans is this:
- The Free Press will be home-delivered Thursdays, Fridays
and Sundays, while The News will be home-delivered
Thursdays and Fridays, probably starting in March.
- The paper will print a one-section street edition
on the days of no home delivery.
- The papers will push daily replica e-editions harder, available by subscription harder.
- There will be no immediate newsroom layoffs when the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, but overall job cuts would reach about 10%.
So Gannett, the healthiest of the big newspaper companies, and MediaNews, highly leveraged and walking on debt eggshells, decided it was time to flip the switch. Freedom's East Valley Tribune is flipping the switch Jan.
