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Old 10-31-2016, 09:53 AM
 
Location: Madison, AL
641 posts, read 698,473 times
Reputation: 402

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So a while back, the Alabama Media Group (Advance Publications) decided to better serve their shareholders and CEO by cutting back their newspapers to 3 days a week. At the same time, they sent their printing presses in Huntsville to the scrap yard, and started printing the Huntsville Times at the Birmingham plant.

Apparently even that costs way too much, so now Gannett in Nashville will print the Huntsville Times and Cox (AJC) in Atlanta will print the Birmingham Times.

Alabama Media Group shifts printing to Atlanta, Nashville | AL.com

The company of course "regrets" the loss of 89 jobs.

I guess pretty soon the whole AMG will outsource its reporting to Yahoo News, and go bankrupt. At least the NOLA Media Group (owned by the same losers at Advance Publications) were forced to resume daily publications in New Orleans by competitive pressures from the Baton Rouge paper.

Imagine Birmingham with a 3 day a week "newspaper", and now without even its own printing presses. S.I Newhouse, Sr. must be turning over in his grave.
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Old 10-31-2016, 10:57 AM
 
23,600 posts, read 70,412,676 times
Reputation: 49268
(Skip if you are a fan of the B'ham News)

I'm not intending to be snarky when I say that I never thought Birmingham had a paper that served and educated the readership properly. Coming from areas with REAL newspapers, it is simply a fact obvious to me. IMO, the B'ham News was a major contributor to the city remaining a backwater for decades. When I lived in Birmingham and wanted news, I bought the Atlanta paper and the New York Times or Boston Globe. If you had taken the Pzitiz ads out of the thin B'ham paper back then, there was barely enough to line a birdcage, and NOTHING got into that paper that wasn't either the furthest right-wing BS or played for derision, whether warranted or unwarranted. Even the kiddie comics were chosen for slant.

Also, back before the internet, the pressmen at most papers were highly unionized, highly paid, and essentially untouchable. I remember one Gannett paper (not related to B'ham) was particularly infuriating to me as an advertiser, making so many *intentional* errors that I was forced into providing full camera ready slicks and refusing payment on botched ads. I don't mourn pressmen like that losing their jobs.

The elimination of the local physical presses is no more a loss than the absence of a caboose on a container train. The greater loss is the number of tiny newspapers (mostly weeklies) that worked hard to serve their advertisers and readers, and even the "alternative" papers that injected some life into the industry. Although those could be amateurish and slanted, they held the tradition of news papers and broadsheets for the education of the people. There are an increasingly small number of real journalists employed by media giants. Those, for me, are the only reason to continue to buy a physical newspaper at all. Major news is now a highly corporatised fourth estate packaged to serve the political stances of those in power and provide just enough fluff to keep readership. What little remains of real news is now only found in the fifth estate, such as https://www.propublica.org/ with much of the rest slipping into the inanity of erroneous facebook posts and bloggers with narrow viewpoints. The average American is probably less factually informed now than he has been since pre-WWII.
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Old 11-01-2016, 02:22 PM
 
Location: Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, and Raleigh
2,580 posts, read 2,485,733 times
Reputation: 1614
Only if E.W. Scripps had held on to the Post-Herald for a few more years because what is left of the former publication group is now with Gannett, which owns the Montgomery Advertiser. It's so bizarre to know that Advance Publications has basically bastardized the newspaper industry in Birmingham...
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Old 11-01-2016, 02:57 PM
 
Location: Birmingham
11,787 posts, read 17,771,707 times
Reputation: 10120
Between al.com and weld and the internet in general, I am not surprised it has come to this. The metro could perhaps support two daily newspapers like The News and The Post-Herald when I was growing up, but as long as it says Birmingham on it it just wont get enough subscribers from OTM and outside the city in general to make it work. So at this point it doesnt even matter where they print it any more.
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Old 11-01-2016, 03:23 PM
 
Location: Birmingham, AL
401 posts, read 536,412 times
Reputation: 461
AL.com is the single biggest joke of a "newspaper" / news outlet in all of a America. Instead of reporting on actual news, the esteemed journalists at AL.com are too concerned with pumping out "articles" on college football and slideshows of "13 Things You Should Never Say to Someone from Alabama" or "What 750k can get you in Mobile / Montgomery / Tuscaloosa". It's such an embarrassment. It is so elementary - so unsophisticated. I suppose the most talented writer there would be John Archibald. That is sad, as most of his work is cringeworthy at best. Every one of our neighboring states has news publications that blow ours out of the water. Yes, even the Clarion-Ledger. Alabama should be absolutely ashamed of its newspapers.
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Old 11-01-2016, 04:01 PM
_OT
 
Location: Miami
2,183 posts, read 2,419,380 times
Reputation: 2053
Who still reads the newspaper in 2016?

Quote:
Originally Posted by 280Tony View Post
AL.com is the single biggest joke of a "newspaper" / news outlet in all of a America. Instead of reporting on actual news, the esteemed journalists at AL.com are too concerned with pumping out "articles" on college football and slideshows of "13 Things You Should Never Say to Someone from Alabama" or "What 750k can get you in Mobile / Montgomery / Tuscaloosa". It's such an embarrassment. It is so elementary - so unsophisticated. I suppose the most talented writer there would be John Archibald. That is sad, as most of his work is cringeworthy at best. Every one of our neighboring states has news publications that blow ours out of the water. Yes, even the Clarion-Ledger. Alabama should be absolutely ashamed of its newspapers.
AL.com is a mess, and so is the comment section.
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Old 11-01-2016, 04:33 PM
 
3,259 posts, read 3,770,880 times
Reputation: 4486
al.com has plenty of fluff articles... but exactly what stories are not being covered because of the fluff pieces?
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Old 11-01-2016, 05:26 PM
 
Location: Birmingham
11,787 posts, read 17,771,707 times
Reputation: 10120
Quote:
Originally Posted by _OT View Post
Who still reads the newspaper in 2016?
The numbers are dropping for sure... I dont think my kids will remember them when they grow up.

Quote:
AL.com is a mess, and so is the comment section.
They should go to Facebook log ins and all that crap would cease.
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Old 11-01-2016, 09:32 PM
 
Location: Birmingham, AL
270 posts, read 531,568 times
Reputation: 240
Quote:
Originally Posted by steveklein View Post
al.com has plenty of fluff articles... but exactly what stories are not being covered because of the fluff pieces?
That is the problem. The public doesn't know what it doesn't know.
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Old 11-02-2016, 07:34 AM
 
Location: Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, and Raleigh
2,580 posts, read 2,485,733 times
Reputation: 1614
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tourian View Post
Between al.com and weld and the internet in general, I am not surprised it has come to this. The metro could perhaps support two daily newspapers like The News and The Post-Herald when I was growing up, but as long as it says Birmingham on it it just wont get enough subscribers from OTM and outside the city in general to make it work. So at this point it doesnt even matter where they print it any more.
That is pathetic within itself because this region would not exist if not for the City of Birmingham and its economic clout. The Over-the-Mountain idiocy needs to cease and desist immediately. Those in those areas do not nor will not ever have the type of economic clout to claim anything of this region hence why I find it so distasteful and ass-backwards everything here has to be "Alabama" instead of Birmingham. That is the type of thinking that will ultimate harm a region. The trends are toward the things and development moving back towards the urban core, and employers have already begin doing such here as well.

I just blame this type of foolishness on shortsightedness and inability to think long term or sustainability from the print publications owned by Scripps and Advance.
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