It’s clear the Missoulian newspaper is dying.
Today publisher Mark Heintzelman wrote a piece called One all-access subscription: New approach moves Missoulian into the future.
I read that and said, oh boy, here we go. Just tell me, Mark, just tell me how much more I have to pay and save me the spiel.
But there is no amount, and that tells me that when my subscription is up in January or February, then it’s going to be hell to pay. I think last year I paid $49 or something, for a full year, and this time around I’ll have to pay $12 a month. So that’s $144, or $95 more than I’m paying now, and for the exact same thing that I’m paying for now.
Well, it’s not the exact same thing, really. A year ago I didn’t have so many fucking ads glaring me in the face every time I logged on, or tried to click on some white space, or all the rest of it. If anything, the Missoulian is one hell of an advertising whore.
Today publisher Mark Heintzelman wrote a piece called One all-access subscription: New approach moves Missoulian into the future.
I read that and said, oh boy, here we go. Just tell me, Mark, just tell me how much more I have to pay and save me the spiel.
But there is no amount, and that tells me that when my subscription is up in January or February, then it’s going to be hell to pay. I think last year I paid $49 or something, for a full year, and this time around I’ll have to pay $12 a month. So that’s $144, or $95 more than I’m paying now, and for the exact same thing that I’m paying for now.
Well, it’s not the exact same thing, really. A year ago I didn’t have so many fucking ads glaring me in the face every time I logged on, or tried to click on some white space, or all the rest of it. If anything, the Missoulian is one hell of an advertising whore.
So I’m not happy about this, and I totally agree with the comment here by sep924:
I was going to reply to this comment, but I figured it’d just get deleted:
I would agree with that. When my subscription is up I suspect it'll cost me quite a bit more. And since I know I can get 10 free articles from all the state papers, I can just jot down a tally in a notebook and figure out which sites I need to use to get all my stories, and for free.
I'm sorry Lee is struggling, and I'm sorry a lot of reporters here in Missoula will eventually lose their job because of the changing industry and poor management. I use these stories several times a week to write stories on my own site, however, so it'll be a loss.
But what can you do? Already Ochenski is gone and what I consider breaking stories aren't reported on for days. This state used to have a rich media tradition, but I guess that's gone now. And what about next year when everyone has to pay for even basic TV? This is not a good trend. I guess we want people to be uniformed.
My advice to smart reporters would be to jettison this failing business model, get some Kickstarter campaign going, and band together to create an online-only model that has some real advertising muscle behind it. People want news, just not like we have now.
And that’s why I have my own blog, so I can say what I want, put my foot as far into my mouth as I want, or entertain or inform you as much as you want. I firmly believe that there, that reporters should be working on their own to come up with some kind of model. I mean, how doe the Missoula Independent manage to stay afloat and pay reporters? How does the Flathead Beacon manage to do it…or all the other newspapers in Montana?
Probably because they’re in Montana and don’t have the money problems over their heads that Lee Newspapers and other shoddy organizations with bloated management and ineffectual bureaucracies have.
It reminds me a lot of General Wu Qi, and his quest to rid the State of Chu of it’s bloated bureaucracy, something that would make the state strong again. This was around 400 BC in ancient China, and you can read a fictionalized account of that in my book The State of Chu:
Probably because they’re in Montana and don’t have the money problems over their heads that Lee Newspapers and other shoddy organizations with bloated management and ineffectual bureaucracies have.
It reminds me a lot of General Wu Qi, and his quest to rid the State of Chu of it’s bloated bureaucracy, something that would make the state strong again. This was around 400 BC in ancient China, and you can read a fictionalized account of that in my book The State of Chu:
In that story, and in real life, Wu Qi doesn’t meet a very good end. In fact, it’s pretty damn violent. When you get bloated bureaucracies, they’ll do just about anything to survive, and I think we see that here with the Missoulian. For instead of trying to give you quality for what you pay, they’re now giving you less quality for three times the price, and then they have the gall to try and justify it.
I have to shake my head at that. And like I said in my comment, I don’t think I’ll be getting that paper much anymore. It’s dying! Just like Missoula! Honestly, I’m not sure how much longer we can afford to live here ourselves, or even in Montana. Those infrastructure reports show how bad the state is, how much it’s dying. Here’s a rundown:
I’ve been asking a lot lately why I came back to Montana from China. I should have went to another state, like my mom, a retired state worker, urged me to.
What is there for young people like me? What help do we have raising a kid? What good are the schools? Why live here?
I grew up here but gosh, there’s nothing here for me now. It’s really sad that Montana has fallen so hard, and that no one cares.
- Solid Waste: B-
- Transit: C+
- Transportation: C
- Irrigation: C
- Drinking Water: C-
- Dams: C-
- Wastewater: D-
- Schools: D-
I’ve been asking a lot lately why I came back to Montana from China. I should have went to another state, like my mom, a retired state worker, urged me to.
What is there for young people like me? What help do we have raising a kid? What good are the schools? Why live here?
I grew up here but gosh, there’s nothing here for me now. It’s really sad that Montana has fallen so hard, and that no one cares.
