Davidfarrow’s Weblog

The first thing this morning I went down to the corner for a newspaper and read the front page in the dawn as I walked home. There seem to be holes in the ship as it founders on the shoals of uncertainty and cyber-space. I still buy the Post and Courier. Last week, the price was raised 50% from 50 cents to 75 cents. I can tell you from experience that one makes no money from circulation. Advertising is the life blood, and it seems to be seeping into the gutter.
On Monday morning, March 23, the… Well, I don’t exactly know what to call that section anymore save the “Society” section. I guess the new paradigm is “Life Style!” That section was buried in the local and regional section. In other words, the two sections are combined. I will be curious to see if this will continue. I suspect, if so, it is to save on newsprint.
I have it on good authority (my spies are everywhere) that even more layoffs are happening across the spectrum at 134 Columbus Street. It’s interesting that they have elevated the man who has presided over the rapid decline of the paper itself to publisher. It is he who is in charge of the redesigned P&C, it is he who will be responsible ultimately at least on paper. It is he who will hang if things go awry.
That’s SOP for the third floor of the building on Columbus Street which is not the P&C, but the Evening Post Publishing Company which is quite large and privately held. I would argue this whole thing had its advent with one middle-management executive who got in way over her head.
In the interest of full disclosure, I will openly state that it was she who downsized me as managing editor of the Mercury as well John Huff as the editor of the P&C, and many others in a “cost-cutting move.” By the time I got to Georgetown a year and half later, her reach extended throughout the empire. She pretty much ran the Georgetown Times… into the ground.
No town I have ever been in needs an independent press like Georgetown. There are a number of factions and they are all corrupt as far as I could see. To peek at the shenanigans I recommend the Citizens Report. It’s run by Marty Tenant who is not a fan of mine at all, but maintains a message board that while descending into puerile hostility, is a valuable resource.
The Georgetown Times is as good as it can be — considering. Jesse Tullos who was the editor for years under the estimable John Burbage left not long after he gave me a space in the Times. I was told by a source that the third floor was not pleased that I turned up on the editorial pages of the Times. Tullos saw the writing on the wall. He saw the woman’s hand about to take the wheel and wanted to get out before it crashed and burned.
I was told he hired me as a parting shot. A quick note to Mr. Tenant: Despite the fact that your board seems to think that the Georgetown Times censors the news, at no time was my column censored in the year and a half I wrote it. If you recall, it was I who was the first to comment on Mayor Wilson’s obvious conflict of interest in the Willowbank Condominiums. I was allowed to press it when I was told by members of city council to knock it off.
In the year and a half I was privileged to write for them, The Times was twisted into something unrecognizable to the residents. The woman took it over with the blessing of the third floor and ran it into the ground.
She changed the format including the name from The Georgetown Times to just the Times. It went from three days a week to five days a week (an obvious attempt to increase ad revenues) Wednesday through Sunday with comics and all.
The headlines, the above the fold stories were about Charleston. Note to the EPPC: Georgetown hates Charleston. The rest don’t give a rat’s behind. Subscriptions were cancelled wholesale.
By the time the new publisher got his marching orders and those associated with another purge were gone to their respective fates. Georgetown’s Fourth Estate was smoldering like Front Street in 1840.
Although by the time I left in October of 2007, they had gone back to the original format that paper was giving away subscriptions which people didn’t want. That paper soldiers on despite the fact that Georgetown is a failed state. The role of all Evening Post entities seems to be that of boosterism. With massive layoffs at the steel mill which seems to be on its last legs, the base is shrinking in Georgetown County with the hospital system being one of its largest advertisers. There is very little to boost.
The Georgetown Times became one more “toxic asset.”
Fast forward 75 miles south to late March of 2009: In the past week the Post and Courier has shrunk and gone up in price. This didn’t happen last week. The plan was hatched long before. The EPPC is a huge, enormous vehicle more in line with an ocean liner than a Boston Whaler. It cannot change direction quickly.
I knew things were hinky when I got back. I went into a prestigious boutique Realtor’s office on Broad Street and was told that if the paper didn’t stop publishing stories about the collapse, many of the venues who sold gagillion dollar estates would stop advertising. I notice that they tried it for a bit, but now can’t afford to advertise. Neither can car dealerships. Both are the means of support for any newspaper as are classified job listings. Now people are more likely to go to Lowcountryhelpwanted.com or Vehix or some realty website.
Last year, according to one of my sources, roughly 50% of the folks on Columbus Street took a buyout which included some pretty high up on the food chain. The company lost hundreds of years of experience. Frankly, if I were my age and working there, I would have taken it as well.
“Lay-offs” (wonder when they will be called back?) are happening apace over there as these words are written. I guess they must for the EPPC hired Warren Peper a few weeks back. He was at bargain-basement prices, but he couldn’t have been cheap.
For those of you from off, Mr. Peper was the victim of industry consultants. Long part of the Live 5 News team, he was canned when an insurance company bought Channel 5 at the height of his career. Indeed, he started and was the principal in TalkBack.
He was later accepted as anchor at Channel 2 along with another Channel 5 dumpee, Carolyn Murray. Late last year, his middle aged good looks and somewhat subdued approach to the news got him canned again.
In a small article hidden away on an inner page, it was announced that the EPPC was happy to announce Warren’s presence on Columbus Street. I found it interesting that he reported to the same person who was in control of the woman who ran the GT into the ground.
I suspect that the EPPC and the P&C are getting into the Internet broadcast business — Right behind ya, bubba.
I would argue that while I like Warren Peper very much, he will be ill-served in the long run. He’s been thrown under the bus twice. I suspect if his presence doesn’t turn the ship around like a Sunfish he will be left in the drink before he can blink.
You have to understand that while the EPPC holds a lot of the cards, they don’t hold them all. The City Paper has made incredible inroads into the P&C’s ad revenue stream. A look at their web site and the heft of their broadsheet shows that they are actually flourishing.
They should. They have great writing. Mind you, they are as closed-minded on the left as they accuse others (including the P&C and the Mercury) as being on the right. They have no sense of history, but they have recognized their niche and have an incredible revenue stream.
The Post and Courier has to be all things to all people. It has had to contend with phenomenal growth while some members of the board saw that maybe this growth thing might be getting out of hand. Joe Riley has gotten a free pass not from the editorial pages but from the third floor. It’s boosterism to an absurd degree.
I think their fatal flaw was trying to change things to suit their world view rather than report on the way things are. They are not alone. Witness the demise of the industry.
The City Paper can get away with it because they are not opinion makers despite their pretensions otherwise. Sadly, neither is the Mercury. Neither paper seems to acknowledge any other side although the writing in both is generally superb.
No, the P&C has to address issues from Georgetown to Beaufort. The sad thing is that its sphere of influence is shrinking as Charleston grows. Where 30 years ago, they were the kingmakers in those towns, the Myrtle Beach Sun and the Savannah Morning News now call the tune. The P&C has a hard enough time covering local issues with its staff spread as thin as it’s ever been.
I actually think the chairman of the board over there can pull it out, if upper management steps out of it. He has a lot of innovative ideas. He should be listened to. He stepped into a fire ant’s nest and a wicked time in history when he assumed power.
Be that as it may, I look at Lucky Dog Publications with which I am loosely associated. The gang over there has realized that community newspapering involves covering things ignored by the larger concerns. It goes back to community/commodity thing I’ve been harping on for the last year and a half. The beauty is that the staff is small and young. If need be, they can turn the Sunfish.
Will the P&C survive? It has to. Like so many other facets of our lives, they are too big, too essential to fail. Even though I pay 75 cents for the front page, editorial pages and pages B1 and 2, I do pay it. Will I pay a dollar? Probably.
The question is, will the influx of people from off, people encouraged to come to fill the new sub developments and condos so as to provide a revenue stream, be the death of what we know as the newspaper? These people don’t care about the community. They, like I, have all the international, national state news from the Internet 24 hours before they see it in the pages of the P&C.
I argue that the third floor has about six months to a year to figure it out. Things are happening at such a break-neck speed that it’s hard for even Internet sites to keep up. Hence Warren Peper — who I suspect is a draw for a new webcam program. Good luck with that.
As I said before, I want the Post and Courier to survive. Whatever else would I read after that second cup of coffee?