**Is the ARGUS ReDo solving or adding to the problems?

OK, pretend for a minute you have a nearly ancient technology and it is being challenged by pixels on a screen. Now pretend your ancient technology is the Argus Leader. What do you do? Make the product better even if it is old technology? Or do you try to convert the best features of the old technology into the worst features of the new technology?

Times Co., Gannett and Tribune Co. Report Declines

From New York Times, April 20, 2007
By Landon Thomas Jr.

Buffeted by an ongoing advertising recession, The New York Times Company and the Gannett Company announced yesterday that their first-quarter profits declined while the Tribune Company reported a loss.

The disappointing results underscored the increasingly tough economic times faced by the industry as advertisers continued to shift their focus away from print to the Internet. In particular, areas like real estate and classified, previously rich revenue generators for newspapers, continued to be weak.

More at Link below:

LINK -- FreePress -- NYT and Gannett Report Loses

Needless to say, if you have been reading any previous posts here, you probably have my answer with regard to what the ARGUS did. It still looks like it was put together with a manure spreader, and it still looks like the actual news content shrunk greatly to be replaced with mindless off the web opinions and mindless social blather of the kind characteristic of teenage girls blogs mostly contemplating their navel or their latest hair do. The Voices blog is an attempt in the right direction however.

You see, we bloggers and our comment complimenters and attackers can churn out opinion by the ton. We don't really need a shallow manurespreader load more of it from the print media.

And, again. .. KELO-TV has been making the best integrated use of webpages for sometime. However, there is a fundamental difference. The transient nature of TV and radio can benefit from the somewhat less transient nature of webpages and blogs, etc. The opposite is the case for newspapers...unless of course they put their dead tree versions in searchable forever databases. But, nope, they provide a crappy search interface that is good for only a few days....unless you want to pay through the nose. Wanta sell dead tree versions of your paper? Give your subscribers free access to the digital archives.

But nope. Nothing like that. Add more glitzy graphics that serve little purpose in a newspaper besides filling expensive space with nothing useful..something like blinking text of the bad old BBS forum days.

***Stay tuned..more news of the decline and perversion surely will follow ..and maybe some new more appropriate category tag images---Doug Wiken