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St Louis Post Dispatch going out of business?
buschmaster
Member Posts: 14,229 ✭✭✭
I know you're thinking "who?" it's the newspaper in St Louis. the big one. the only one really.
talked to some dude the other day. says he is (or was) a freelance writer for them. he says, anyways, that they didn't get back to him about getting paid for his last job, and they closed down their main building (that they have had forever) and relocated offices to a smaller, crappy building in a seedy low-rent part of downtown. he says rumor has it they aren't just scaling back, they are about to go out of business.
I said "but it's the newspaper! they can't go out of business"
he just shrugged his shoulders.
what do you make of that.
if something like that does happen, that's news. "the" major newspaper of a major city going out of business. you heard it here first.
talked to some dude the other day. says he is (or was) a freelance writer for them. he says, anyways, that they didn't get back to him about getting paid for his last job, and they closed down their main building (that they have had forever) and relocated offices to a smaller, crappy building in a seedy low-rent part of downtown. he says rumor has it they aren't just scaling back, they are about to go out of business.
I said "but it's the newspaper! they can't go out of business"
he just shrugged his shoulders.
what do you make of that.
if something like that does happen, that's news. "the" major newspaper of a major city going out of business. you heard it here first.
Comments
I do do research on important stories I hear here..
What did they say when you called them directly and asked? [;)]
good question. so I did call them and ask. they said the building is up for sale (forgot to ask if they moved out already), they are owned by a publishing co. in Iowa that owns like 50 other newspapers, they are scaling back, and no they aren't going out of business. says they have hundreds of freelance writers and that must be just some gossip among them.
didn't know anything about the part about not getting paid.
I toured the St Louis Past Disgrace (one local nickname for it) sometime in the early 60s when they were still using hot linotype machines to set type. It was once a good newspaper. Then again, St Louis was once a pretty good city.
No longer true - for either of them.
Edit to add: they had a layoff last month during which about nine employees elected to resign and accept severance pay, most of them from the newsroom. When you reduce the news staff, it isn't good news.
In my opinion, the few conservative working people in St Louis refuse to read that rag, and the vast lump of liberal freeloaders can't read.
Just look and the rental business my girlfriend and I have.
We have 5 houses. At least one vacancy a year.
In the old days, six years ago, we had to run an ad in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, or else in the Asheville NC Citizen-Times.
Cost about $125 for a one week ad. Tiny print, had to abbreviate like "hwd flrs fplc." Can you translate that? No pics of course.
We always ran an ad for 2 weeks, sometimes ran for five weeks.
Then, we got on to [elsewhere.] As many words as you want. Twenty four big color pics. Free.
Even better you put the ad in when you want, it was always a trick to get that ad in the paper for the weekend traffic.
So, we haven't paid for an ad in six years. Imagine the profit those newspapers made from running those little ads.
I wouldn't be surprised if every newspaper went bye-bye in the next five years.
It makes me sad because I used to spend hours every day reading the paper, and my brother and I were paper boys for the Atlanta Journal back when I was a kid. I was 11 years old, delivered the paper on my bicycle.
Sunday morning, my dad would get up and we would deliver the paper at 3 am. Couldn't fit that big Sunday paper in the basked of the bicycle.
.
The one local daily rag available in our area is so far to the left of their mostly conservative audience, the have lost money for years.
I suspect ultra liberal benefactors are keeping their presses running.
The library is acutely aware that they are skating on thin ice.
They have computers! They have 12 computers, real nice high speed internet.
There are always at least 6 people having at the computers.
Also, front and center at the library are many many shelves of movie rentals on DVD. Hundreds and hundreds of movies.
There are also, back in the left side and on the right as well, lots of books you can check out.
I think the library will survive but it ain't like it was back when I was a kid in 1962.
Libraries are next to go,,,,[;)][;)]
If Obama and the rest of the liberal democrats had their way they would already be burning books, especially history books.
Actually hate to see it go even though I hate their liberal politics. Still like to read the newspaper. Advertising is the key though. Advertised in the Belleville News Democrat forever because I had no choice. Tried {elsewhere} but it did not work for me. Tried a couple of local Facebook sites recently and it was great. Free and got the results I was looking for.
we must not be far apart, im about 15 min from downtown stl, 25 min from bnd