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.
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The D&C still has about 200,000 people who buy their paper each Sunday and about 150,000 the other six days of the week. You could probably at least double that amount due to the number of people who read it in each individual household or share the paper at local restaurants, barber shops, etc. That is a giant number that I think any local blog would have a hard time getting 1% of those numbers. Then add in the people who actually read the D&C web site and it is no wonder that the D&C continues to print each day and is the most talked about product in Rochester.
I would be interested in seeing reader numbers on all the other blog sites that are available such as this one, Monroe Rising and Rochester Turning.
By the way, I do work in the newspaper business, but not for Gannett or even in the Rochester area.
I would be interested in seeing reader numbers on all the other blog sites that are available such as this one, Monroe Rising and Rochester Turning.
I think it's just the four of us right now on this one. We're a bit more selective about our audience.
Make that 5.
That's a 25% increase in readership over the past few minutes. I don't think the D&C can match that kind of growth.
The busiest indy site I know about, RocWiki, gets about 4,000 visitors a day. So you're right that the D&C dwarfs other alternatives.
I don't think anyone would question that the D&C has readership and impact. The question is: how many people and how much money do you actually need to do that? My suspicion is quite a bit less on both counts.
If the D&C dinosaur would just hurry up and fall over, perhaps we'll get a chance to see.
What would we then see?
Griping about: lost union jobs? GateHouse running the only "show" in town? or more bloggers tapping into their readership for a payday after their farewell package runs out?
What I hope we'd see is some investor willing to put some money into a web-only newspaper alternative. But that might be a pipe dream.
But we'd also see all of those other things, too. It would be a rich pageant.
"What I hope we'd see is some investor willing to put some money into a web-only newspaper alternative"
Hope he or she has a ton of money to burn.
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