Beginning next Wednesday, we are eliminating two of our three daily stock-market pages. Here’s the full story from today’s paper. Not a lot of surprises here. Papers big and small—News & Observer, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the News & Record etc.—have done away with much of their financial agate in the past year.
It’s about cost—read newsprint—and utility. The fact of the matter is that as the amount of financial data out there has soared and space never kept pace with it in the first place. Stocks, bonds, mutual funds, you name it. And of course there’s the Web, where most of us do our checking and portfolio management, if we’re lucky enough to have one.
I admit to a little nostalgia. Looking at stocks and baseball agate over scrambled eggs and coffee is not a bad way to kill 20 minutes, but the market-analysis page we’ve put together in place of our existing pages is a great overview of the previous day’s events. It’s one-stop shopping. I know what to expect when I see it.
This is one of the ways that newspapers are adapting to the changes brought by technology. We want to do what we do best and can provide the most value to our readers. Not everybody is going to like the changes, but change is unavoidable. If you have thoughts on the stocks changes, let me know.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
This is way overdue. While you are at it, get rid of the canned wire news in the business section that everyone reads online the day before.
With the money saved on newsprint you can go out and hire more reporters to cover local business. The Journal used to have an incredible business section every Monday. It was in Tab format and was very well done.
Today all we get are press releases (free advertisements) and a summary of retail and restaurant openings. The Journal should strive to have a better pulse on business activities shaping our city and region.
Thanks for these comments. I’m a former business editor here, and I spent a lot of my energy working on our tab back in those days. So I have a vested interest in the idea that the past was better, but it wasn’t. We have a really smart and savvy business staff that is much more aggressive than in the past. There’s more competition for business news and more outlets for it, and they’ve stepped up to meet the challenges. This is not to say that we don’t tell people about restaurant openings and the like, but I really believe the coverage is broader and deeper than you are giving us credit for. And if there are stories we’re not covering, let me know.
You’re right. I’m not giving them enough credit. But I do believe that readers have a thirst for more local content and that is my point. I think the changes to the stock page are warranted and I for one am glad to see the Journal taking somewhat risky steps to provide more value to its readers.
Fair enough. Thx
Oh boo hoo. One Christmas when we had little money, I saved all of those useless pages and wrapped presents in them, using red and green bows. It looked nice.
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