The Printer’s Devil

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A frequent reader of the PD has kept me entertained with updates about a newspaper soap opera in my home state of Kansas involving a newspaper in Liberal and its new challenger.

In the latest turn, the established newspaper is suing the new upstart in federal court.

In happier times, the Southwest Times of Liberal had always racked up an impressive list of “top newspaper” awards from Kansas Press Association Better Newspaper contests.

It was a gorgeous and well-designed newspaper and contest judges — always from press associations from other states — who awarded the top prizes to the Times gushed over the paper. Every stupid publisher in the state dreamed of being like the Southwest Times and those I knew would always wave around copies of it as a newspaper to emulate.

But if you looked beyond the surface you noticed that Times even in its glory days it was pretty but it was pretty light on news. I knew a former Times staffer and he mentioned that although the staff had plenty graphic artists, it was a thankless job for editors and reporters because for a paper of its size, even by the scurvy standards that passed for adequate in CorpsNews Land, the news staff was critically undersized, overworked, underpaid and over-dissed.

And given the steady diet of published cotton candy, the subscription list got shorter over the year. If you’ve read many of the rants on the Printer’s Devil about stupid publishers and newspimping, you’ll know I’m not surprised that readers have been abandoning the paper. In the light of falling readership, you’ll also know that the corporation that owned the Times decided to open up the CorpsNews Playbook. Instead of dealing with the problem of a puny newsroom, the company decided to cut costs and decided to drop from publishing daily (in this case five days a week) to three times a week.

According to the CorpsNews Playbook, everything is wonderful. The readers grumble but not enough leave to spook advertisers and the suffering reporters do the best they can to paddle the leaking lifeboat and the CorpsNews honchos get fat Christmas bonuses for pushing profits into the stratosphere.

However, in Liberal the story suddenly took a turn into the CorpsNews Twilight Zone:

The local publisher, managing editor, the news staff, much of the advertising staff and nearly all of the other employees left the Times and started a new daily, the High Plains Daily Leader.

It was a remake of the Jurassic Park movies where the small, fast velociraptors started feasting on the big, fat, slow dinosaur of a Times.

According to one Associated Press story, the Times had lost 2,000 readers in two months and in two months, the Daily Leader had more paid readers. I’ll note that AP has be covering the continuing saga with a certain amount of glee. (As part of its cost-cutting regime, the Times cut its Associated Press wire and other syndicated stuff and “went local“ — that‘s also part of the CorpsNews Playbook‘ if you really want to shaft your readers, you go “hyperlocal.” Perhaps you‘ve read my diatribe on crap that‘s promoted as local news.)

The CorpsNews company that owns the Times hasn‘t been bright enough or too greedy to figure out how to deal the usurper. (Offering readers a better newspaper is too alien in CorpsNews Land.)

Instead of paying more for better reporters, Times owners are paying for attorneys instead. They’re instead suing for computer fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, breach of fiduciary duty, deceit, interfering with business relations, defamation and civil conspiracy.

The new paper said it looking at its own responses.

I would suggest countersuing for fraud, but that probably wouldn’t fly because fraud best describes the state of most American newspapering these days.

As they say, the saga will be continued.