September 22, 2005

If a dead tree falls...

...in the media forest, does anyone really care?

Well, I don't know, but probably they should, if nothing else than for nostalgia's sake. It's taken a while, but the Birmingham Post-Herald has finally decided to throw in the towel. Of course, the news reached the wire before they had even updated their webpage (As of 2:45 p.m. on Thursday, it is still Wednesday in P-H-land.)

Here's a version of the story from Editor & Publisher--being part of the legacy media, it seems even in death the Po'-Herald can't help but blame someone else:

NEW YORK The afternoon daily in Birmingham, Ala., will be no more after this Friday, The E. W. Scripps Company, owner of the newspaper, announced today.

The closing of The Post-Herald, a five-day afternoon newspaper, also marks the end of a joint operating agreement between Scripps and Advance Publications Inc., owner of the seven-day morning paper, The Birmingham News, which manages the printing, marketing, and distribution of both Birmingham newspapers. The JOA was scheduled to run until 2015.

According to a Scripps statement, "the economics of publishing The Post-Herald were no longer favorable."

The latest FAS-FAX in April showed the p.m. daily with an average circulation of just 7,544, down from 8,948 the previous year.

“The Post-Herald has a long tradition of journalistic excellence and community service, but Scripps was left with no choice but to face economic realities,” Richard A. Boehne, The E. W. Scripps Company's executive vice president and head of the company's newspaper division, said in his statement. “The Post-Herald's talented and dedicated staff produces an excellent newspaper, but unfortunately the Birmingham market has made it clear that it will no longer support an afternoon edition.” [...]

Oh, cry me a river, boys. The Birmingham market--like markets anywhere else--will respond if you give them something worth buying. The Post-Herald has been struggling valiantly the past couple of years since it swapped its long-running morning news spot with the Birmingham News, and the most noticeable sign of this late struggle was their insistence on publishing EVERY SINGLE ISSUE WITH GIANT 72 POINT HEADLINES!! The quality--such as it is--was no better nor worse than anything else on the market. There was no compelling reason to read it, and thus you have the sad end to a paper that wraps up with only 7600 readers in a metro area with a population of over a million people. The old Scripps-Howard tagline--"Give the people light and they will find their own way"--well, there never really was much light there.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at September 22, 2005 02:59 PM
Comments

I’m sorry to see it go. I spent a year or more in high school getting up at about 3:30 every—that is every morning to deliver that paper. Back when it was actually that paper—the morning one I mean. I really can’t recall much about that time maybe the lack of sleep warped me?

Posted by: jim at September 22, 2005 04:03 PM

Not sure, but it sure seemed to make you bold.

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at September 22, 2005 04:07 PM

Not knowing much about life in B'ham, I'm surprised you guys still had an afternoon paper. The Jackson Daily News, Memphis Press-Scimitar, and Mobile Press (or was it the Register?) ceased to be years ago.

Posted by: BillW at September 22, 2005 04:48 PM

That was the Mobile Press--but yes, we used to have two. Or more--the Post-Herald was the result of a merger between the Birmingham Post and the Birmingham Age-Herald back in 1950. Imagine--THREE dailies!

(By the way, the old Age-Herald building still stands--it's a neat old place with a terra cotta owl and a globe on the pediment.)

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at September 22, 2005 05:05 PM

I haven't seen anyone explain this: Why did Scripps agree to the switch to afternoon? Pre-1996, when the News was in the afternoon, was it still the higher-circulated paper? Or did the Post-Herald collapse only after it went into the PM?

Posted by: Mike at September 23, 2005 06:13 PM

Mike, as I recall, it was touted as something like the Mercedes-Chrysler "merger of equals" in that it was put forth as being mutually advantageous. I think it was really driven by the News, though, because of the changing reading habits of its subscriber base. The way they put it at the time, back in the old steel mill days, the evening paper was expected as sort of an end-of-the-day wrapup of news, but supposedly modern service and office workers want to see news the first thing in the morning. The News really drove the change in order to try to capture more market from other papers in the market, especially national stuff like USATODAY.

The P-H wasn't breaking any records as the morning paper, around 9,000 subscribers or so, but after it switched to evenings, over the course of the next few years it shed about 20% of its readership. They tried to put the best face on the switch at the time, but I think they knew their days were numbered from then on.

I don't know the backroom negotiations that went on, but I speculate that the News probably would have pulled out of their JOA with the Post-Herald if the P-H didn't agree to switch to evenings, which would have killed them right then. As it is, it just put off the inevitable.

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at September 24, 2005 12:47 PM