RochesterWriters

Reader Elmer sends this fascinating analysis of the problems at The Daily Advertiser, a Gannett Paper in Lafayette, Louisiana. Layfayette is about half the size of Rochester, and the Advertiser is less than half the size of the D&C: the 200 or so remaining employees put out a paper as small as 16 pages on some days.

Though the Advertiser is paid $240K per year to publish public notices, Gannett laid off the legal clerk who handled those notices. This led to a cancellation of a City-Parish council meeting because the Advertiser failed to publish the meeting notice.

In the first three quarters of 2007, the Advertiser made 33.5% margins on revenue of $23.2 million. That's $7.8 million of profit for Gannett.

In the same period, the Democrat and Chronicle made 28.5% margins on revenue of $62.3 million. That's $17.8 million in profit, according to Gannett Blog.

The Lafayette story contrasts the cutbacks at the Advertiser with a nearby family-owned daily in Arcadia, LA. That paper hasn't cut a single job, and the publisher isn't planning to do so.

With all the hysteria about the death of newspapers, it's important to remember that what's shrinking is profit margins. Newspapers are still very profitable, and 30-40% margins can take quite a hit before a paper starts to lose money. Gannett is cutting to save margins, not to save the company.

The whole Lafayette story is worth a close read. It's the well-researched, lengthy and well-written product of a Lafayette alt-weekly that's only been around since 2003. I haven't read anything as good in City Newspaper, which continues to be an alternative in name, not in content.

Jill Terreri covers the politics for the D&C, and she's pretty good. She might even be One in a Million, as her editor titled his latest post about her trip to DC to cover the inauguration.

Jill's going to accompany a group of Obama supporters, and she'll be posting about the trip on a D&C blog. According to her editor, "she will be sleeping on the bus and will face potential hardships including a potentially taxed cell phone network and lack of portable toilets."

I'm sure it's no fun to sleep on the bus, but Jill is probably used to hardship, because she has to fit her stories into the tiny space alloted by the D&C. Jill , each of which has a few paragraphs about a topic that could support thousands of words.

Gannett has spend millions on RocMoms, RocPets, RocEarth and a dozen other sites, but their flagship brand is still letting the size of the paper edition dictate the length of their best reporters' stories.

Perhaps it's just me, but I think a headline writer is trying to have a little fun today: "Members from the Rochester Area Get Busy in the House"

The D&C's parent company, Gannett, announced today that employees will be taking a mandatory week off. Coverage is all over the local and national media. Editor and Publisher has the basic facts. Locally, City Newspaper has a piece which pegs the newsroom cost of the most recent layoff at 14 jobs. Last but certainly not least, reader Elmer sends Gannett Blog's take.

We'll get back to our D&C Conversation shortly, but let's take a break for a minute to discuss an interesting development in the Renaissance Square saga. One of our local bloggers, the Moderate Urban Champion, has a smart post on recent developments there.

The notion that it takes a D&C-size behemoth to give us good local news coverage is a myth. I want to bust that myth by the numbers. Let's start with reporting.

After the last D&C layoff, I estimated that 680 employees were left at the D&C. If you look at our edited news feed (click the "news" link above), you'll see that some fraction of those 680 people churn out about a dozen stories that we think are worth reading every day.

Of course, we're picky, and that number doesn't include sports or business, so let's say the D&C has 50 local items per day.

If you look carefully at those stories, you'll see that most of them duplicate information found elsewhere. Car crashes and arrest reports come from police blotters. In sports, the Amerks and area colleges all have press offices that post game stories to their websites. And most of the business news on the D&C comes from press releases.

Having a reporter and editor rewrite and review this content is a waste of time and money. An online news source could automatically classify and feed it to readers faster and better than the D&C does now.

Some of the content on the D&C doesn't even have to exist online. Why have an opinion page when everyone with a blog can bloviate? Our "views" page gathers opinion from a dozen or so Rochester bloggers, and it just scratches the surface of what's available to anyone with an Internet connection.

I'd love to see what a dozen, or two dozen, motivated reporters at an online-only news outlet could accomplish in Rochester. If the D&C dinosaur would just hurry up and fall over, perhaps we'll get a chance to see.

In my next post, I'm going to offer some thoughts on online advertising that people will actually read. But first I'd like to hear what the other RocWriters think.