Revenge of the online news editors

by Carl Natale on February 23, 2013

I’ve been publishing online since 1997. And one of the consistent criticisms that never went away is that the online newspaper operations were never profitable.

And this came from journalists — not the business side of newspapers. These stalwarts of the left-wing media conspiracy (you do see the sarcasm here?) became rabid capitalists.

My answer was that I would gladly quit when they fired the editorial page staff. Because those pages had no ads. They took up valuable newsprint without attracting a dollar of ad revenue.

Apparently I have some fans in Provo, Utah:

“The Daily Herald has recently made some organizational changes, and with those we have decided to change the way we present opinions in the newspaper. This is a popular section, and we will keep bringing it to you, but we will no longer be printing a daily opinions page with editorials, wire opinions and cartoons.” (via Editor’s note)

Of course this is the problem with cost-benefit analyses. Some pretty important journalism gets thrown out in the name of revenue generation.

Sports departments should be worried.

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