I hear the Hurl will, as of May, be published six days a week. I wonder if the subscription rate will stay the same?

I wonder how long until it becomes a weekly publication not a daily.

Mondays are out, I am told, because that's the lowest ad revenue day of the week.

If the paper loses a day between the time when TDW went from six to seven days and back to six days, we'll all be long dead and gone. (Just over 30 years)

Thanks for the encouragement.

Just to let you know that even though I never read the printed news other than obituaries and a bit of local stuff I have 36 years of uninterrupted subscription to TDW including now, living several thousand miles away, with an electronic subscription. I want a local paper to exist. The Internet supplies the bulk of my news needs though.

Do you really think a paper version of TDW will be around in 30 years?

As do I. However, there are much better tabloids than the one this has become upon which one should spend their hard earned dollars.



Yep... and Jon Stewart.

Going backward to answer your question:

A paper version in 30 years? Yes. Not like this one, but a daily paper version? Yes. Just my opinion...

Thank you for the electronic subscription. Every little bit helps...

Although I am sure you know this, TS, I feel compelled to state for the record that I am an unabashed supporter of the Hurl's rank and file; the failing here is not in the efforts of the worker bees but in the general incompetence of the higher powers.

I just don't see a daily paper existing in thirty years. Where I live now we have a weekly paper that is a hot commodity and, unlike daily papers, people tend to keep it around to reread feature articles and, yes, advertising.

In TDW there is local news, obituaries, local advertising and letters to the editors. Oh yes, there is a lot of two day old world and national news that is almost embarrassing to have included because not only do we know about that news we probably already know how it concludes.

So we have local news, obituaries, letters to the editor and advertising that is fresh, uncovered by other sources, and worth buying or subscribing to the paper.

Then we have the advertisers group of which I have also been and still am a member of. They want their advertising to be read, to sit on a shelf and people to be able to refer back to it. That does not require a daily version, though.

Shelf life is important to them. For shelf life you need very informative articles, features that are interesting and the obituaries, local news, etc. Interesting reading to keep them around. The bottom of a bird cage is not important.

The breaking news? From TDW: The newspaper will continue to post breaking news on its Web site, www.thedaily­world. That lines up with what I would envision.

In my opinion as soon as the generation of paper readers who can't use the Internet fades, the only sustainable business model for most newspapers will be what I have described in a weekly or twice weekly version with a daily electronic version.

Would that be the local management, the Stephens Media Group management, or both? Really I'm curious as to your perspective as to the question.

A consultant once said, in a meeting I attended, "If you're still doing news the way you did it in 1997, you're in trouble."

1997? Try 1957.

My understanding is, everyone who got out of there at about the time as Hughes, did so for a good reason and probably because there were unpopular things brewing, or anticipated, from management (which may have included this decision to cut production) ... Beavis, did you work there?

But it is a result of local or corporate management?

The Daily World has not been locally owned since it was acquired by DonRey from the LaFromboise family in 1968 following the early death of owner and publisher Dick LaFromboise. I believe the La Fromboise family still owns the Centralia Chronicle.

Stephens Media purchased the midsize Donrey Media Group chain from the family of Arkansas media mogul Donald Reynolds following his death in 1993. Donrey was always one of the lowest paying newspaper chains in the country and was often at the bottom of the list in Pew Research media reports on reporters in the newsroom per capita of coverage area population. The Stephens company is best known as one of the largest investment firms off Wall Street. Infer what you will.

With the precipitous decline of newspapers, there isn't a newsroom in the country that has not had unpopular cuts from management. While I think the reliance on news wire has always been too high at the Daily World, local economic factors do dictate how good a newspaper a community can afford. With the fracture of the base economic model of newspapers and the explosion of alternative advertising opportunities, I am not sure any community can afford the quality of coverage they expect. These are the days when Time magazine is nearly under, National Geographic is holding on by its fingertips, major newspapers are on the brink of collapse and the idea of objective reporting seems to be dead.

Really, I do not think most younger people care about the news anymore, or trust it as much as the rest of the broken institutions that have betrayed them, and I can't say I blame them. It's post-cynical resignation. They just want to be entertained and create their own content. Screw the man.

In most large corporations, local management is people who have no choice but to say yes or walk, and therefore a good reflection of corporate management. Big newspaper companies are like oil tankers with a busted rudder, it's all momentum and wind, and it's a slow bitch to turn. Among corporations, newspapers have historically been very slow to change.

I did, and a current editor there is the specific reason I left. It wasn't any sort of upcoming policy shift--it was the specific bullying and irrational behavior by one particular individual that caused me to look elsewhere.

I can't speak to why others left but I'd like to think my departure (and the reasons for it) gave them some motivation.

Local backed up by corporate. They can't see that the old ways are what is dying as opposed to the medium itself--from what I read, smaller community papers like the Hurl that are the "only game in town" are doing rather well across the country these days.

This is too bad, I hope they stick around, I like the feel of newspapers and as my wife says, sitting at the breakfast table or on the crapper w/ a lap top just isn't the same, reading the comics and doing the crossword on the lap top isn't the same. plus you can't roll up your lap top and swat the dog with it.