PG’s print cuts worry funeral directors
August 14, 2018The Tribune-Review reports that a letter sent to funeral directors by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this week, stated that the two days per week that the longtime paper intends to drop from their printing schedule are Tuesdays and Saturdays. The PG announced the change earlier this summer as a way to cut costs and focus more on the digital format.
One funeral director told the Tribune-Review that about 20 percent of his clients decline a newspaper obituary, citing that they prefer to use social media and funeral home websites for information on visiting hours and funeral times. And, if they do run a newspaper obituary, it tends to run for just one day rather than two or three as was done years ago. Other directors said it is too soon to speculate on how the changes will affect their work, but admit that it would likely complicate the process to have fewer print days.
They could drop the Friday and Saturday editions, combining with the Sunday edition and call the whole thing the “Weekend Edition.” Wouldn’t that accomplish the same thing? And the “Weekender” could be on sale for three days, increasing sales!
Does the Block Family realize many western PA residents, including senior citizens who subscribe to or regularly purchase the Post Gazette don’t use computers, smart phones, tablets, or spend their days reading Internet news about celebrities on their phones,order items from Amazon, send texts & emails, play Candy Crush, or use Facebook & depend on print editions of newspapers to get their local news including obituaries? Their decision to eliminate two days print editions is a disservice to many loyal PG readers.
Fran,
While I understand your concern, it’s a business decision that fortunately/unfortunately makes sense. Subscriptions are down; materials are expensive. In order to survive you need to appeal to the majority of your current/potential audience.
Don’t die on a Tuesday. Got it.
Hello Fran, I miss the days of coming home from work and relaxing with the papers, Post Gazette, Press, Tribune Review and the smaller ones like the Signal Item and Green Sheet, nice pastimes that are sadly fading, except in our memories.
I stayed away from computers at first, in truth for years, even when family wanted to give me one I pushed it away but finally heard so much dot-com this and that, that I put my foot down and got a computer and took classes for it, and now I love it! You can get all the newspapers right on your screen and they\’re so easy to read, by changing a setting to make the size of the print larger, it\’s easy and no more tired eyes!
Fran, you could be the ambassador for computers and get your friends into them, they\’ll thank you and no more missing out on news!
Jim, I’ve talked with friends & neighbors who signed up for the PG’s “free” on-line access to the paper only to cancel it after having their content blocked & getting a message from the PG saying, the two or three online articles they had read exceeded the free content limits, but they could get unlimited access to the website, by paying for a subscription. Sad.
Fran: It takes a lot of money to publish a newspaper, whether a small neighborhood weekly or a major metro paper. I prefer the print edition if it’s a local paper, but print is not in favor anymore with significant numbers of readers. The papers have to pay their bills, and putting up a pay wall for digital content is a way to try to survive. The cost for digital is WAY below what a print subscription costs. When a paper offers a limited “free” sub, its purpose is to get you to sample the digital experience. They could not afford to give away their product indefinitely, thus the need to pay to continue receiving it. It’s not about greed or bait-and-switch. It’s about survival. Many locales have lost their newspapers. Is Pittsburgh next? Hope not…and BTW the Trib and every other paper is in the same boat.
Jim, first the PG decides “to hell with those long-time loyal readers of a certain age,” we’re going digital to attract younger, more tech-savvy subscribers; now KDKA TV is cancelling the Decades channel & has chosen to replace Decades with a new network appealing to a “younger demographic.” I’d like to remind the PG & KDKA TV, when WQED abruptly eliminated the Create Channel, it was angry complaints from thousands of viewers including a lot of “old foagies”like me which convinced QED to reverse their decision & return the Create Channel to their lineup.
Fran,
Your complaint two posts back was about the fact that you can’t get the digital edition for free indefinitely, not about the introduction of technology which was your first issue. So apparently you see some value in the digital version of the P-G after all, since you want it albeit you want it to be free. That’s not a way to maintain the business of publishing. I find forced adoption of technology burdensome at times myself, but I understand and accept the financial necessity of what the P-G is doing. You must not be too taxed with the technology at hand though, as you seem to be able to use it repeatedly to post on this site multiple times.