Western Expresso

[TimeFadesAway]

Originally Posted by rrskylar

So the Free Press is losing two of it's best reporters in Kives and Tait!

Kirbyson is leaving as well. 3 announcements on the same day doesn't bode well.

[bomberjet]

Lawless left recently and is full time with TSN. Writing is one the wall for the FreeP.

[Stormer]

Newspapers are in big trouble. You can go to Facebook and for way less money tell them you want your ad on the timeline of every male over 40 in East Kildonan who has few friends (I am not talking about you guys ). Or you can go to Google and say you want your ad on to go to every person in Steinbach who searched for pickup trucks in the last month.

Plus there is free and often better, more current and customizable news all over the web. As they cut back and lose journalists, they will become even less relevant.

I used to be a voracious newspaper reader but they lost me long ago.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Stormer

Newspapers are in big trouble. You can go to Facebook and for way less money tell them you want your ad on the timeline of every male over 40 in East Kildonan who has few friends (I am not talking about you guys ). Or you can go to Google and say you want your ad on to go to every person in Steinbach who searched for pickup trucks in the last month.

Plus there is free and often better, more current and customizable news all over the web. As they cut back and lose journalists, they will become even less relevant.

I used to be a voracious newspaper reader but they lost me long ago.

There is a huge price to be paid for this because newspapers use ad revenue to support, among other things, actual reporting and journalism. All Facebook gives us is 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 memes and invites to games we don't want to play repeated ad nauseam.

But yeah, it's obvious that the Free Press is reeling. It used to be that layoffs and departures would affect things at the margins, but now they're cutting to the core of their product with several senior members of an already depleted ranks heading out the door.

If you ever pick up the physical product, it's actually shocking how little content there is left in there. Once you strip out the full page car ads and get down to actual column-inches, it's probably not that far removed from where the Brandon Sun was, say, 10 or 12 years ago. It's to the point where the Winnipeg Sun is actually starting to look like the healthier of the two paid dailies here despite the still huge gap in circulation, which is not something I would have ever said before.

[biguc]

Metro says there's going to be a party on June 4th in the little parking lot/Merchant's Park next to the Boyd medical building. In itself, that's pretty cool, but one of the people putting this even together is classic SSP Winnipeg forumer, Pootkao.

http://www.metronews.ca/news/winnipeg/20...g-to-a-downtown-winnipeg-vacant-lot.html

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by esquire

There is a huge price to be paid for this because newspapers use ad revenue to support, among other things, actual reporting and journalism. All Facebook gives us is 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 memes and invites to games we don't want to play repeated ad nauseam.

But yeah, it's obvious that the Free Press is reeling. It used to be that layoffs and departures would affect things at the margins, but now they're cutting to the core of their product with several senior members of an already depleted ranks heading out the door.

If you ever pick up the physical product, it's actually shocking how little content there is left in there. Once you strip out the full page car ads and get down to actual column-inches, it's probably not that far removed from where the Brandon Sun was, say, 10 or 12 years ago. It's to the point where the Winnipeg Sun is actually starting to look like the healthier of the two paid dailies here despite the still huge gap in circulation, which is not something I would have ever said before.

I guess the question is whether Bart can write the entire paper by himself.

[rrskylar]

Originally Posted by Andy6

I guess the question is whether Bart can write the entire paper by himself.

If you are referring to Kives he is one of the three leaving, Bart is off to CBC!

[Cyro]

Well, can't blame him, I'd be running for the life boats as well if the ship I was on hit a floating berg on my travels through life...greener pastures..

[esquire]

What's the over-under on the Free Press continuing to put out a six-day a week paper edition? I'd say 4 years.

I could easily see it becoming electronic only with a once week Saturday paper edition that includes the week's best stories in a digest format, with all of the other popular weekend features.

[rrskylar]

Originally Posted by esquire

What's the over-under on the Free Press continuing to put out a six-day a week paper edition? I'd say 4 years.

I could easily see it becoming electronic only with a once week Saturday paper edition that includes the week's best stories in a digest format, with all of the other popular weekend features.

You mean like the obituaries?!

[esquire]

Originally Posted by rrskylar

You mean like the obituaries?!

Actually yes, that is bang on. The obits charge a fortune and many older people read them religiously... paper edition only.

It's basically the only lucrative part of the once-formidable classified advertising section left, other than possibly the homes listings that run once a week. Not even 15 years ago the Saturday classifieds were the go-to place to buy and sell, but these days it's almost nonexistent... except for the obituaries.

[CoryB]

Originally Posted by rrskylar

You mean like the obituaries?!

Is it normal for a daily paper to write and run their own obituary?

[blueandgoldguy]

Who will write the restaurant reviews for the Free Press now!!

[esquire]

Originally Posted by blueandgoldguy

Who will write the restaurant reviews for the Free Press now!!

They can just start publishing one particularly good urbanspoon or yelp review per week

[vid]

Holy 🞵🞵🞵🞵 I had no idea you guys didn't have a Sunday paper. Thunder Bay's main newspaper still has a Sunday edition and monthly gloss magazine feature.

I'm not sure how it continues to exist. I know someone whose kids have a paper route, the average age of subscribers to Chronicle-Journal is easily over 65.

[esquire]

^ There is and there isn't a Sunday edition. For quite some time now (close to 10 years I'd imagine) the Free Press has published a Sunday paper but they don't include it in the hard-copy subscription packages... you can only get it by going to the store and buying a copy which I'd imagine that relatively few people do.

In addition to that, the Winnipeg Sun puts out a regular Sunday edition which is their biggest issue of the week.

Sunday papers in Canada are becoming a thing of the past for the most part. The Ottawa Citizen, Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald stopped publishing on Sundays altogether a few years ago.

[vid]

Old folks in Thunder Bay don't know how good they have it lol.

Do old people in Winnipeg also complain about the size of the phone books every year?

[rrskylar]

Originally Posted by vid

Old folks in Thunder Bay don't know how good they have it lol.

Do old people in Winnipeg also complain about the size of the phone books every year?

What's a phone book?

[vid]

A phone book is a directory of telephone numbers for a geographic area. The primary uses of phone books include reminding people of the past and elevating my computer monitor at work to a more ergonomic height.

I have to use 4 phone books to do that now because they're so thin! Used to have 1,000 pages here, they've pared it down to about 350.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by vid

Old folks in Thunder Bay don't know how good they have it lol.

Do old people in Winnipeg also complain about the size of the phone books every year?

The old folks really do have it good if that's the case... I'd imagine Thunder Bay is probably one of the smaller cities in North America that still has a 7-day a week newspaper.

I feel for the elderly though, as the size of the print in phone books keeps getting smaller.