Breaking: Daily News To Become An “Edition” Of Inky
Lest you wander into the thicket of tweets that seemed to be issuing forth from Daily News and the Inquirer staffers as the news was being broken to them, this is what we know: Around 5PM today, Brian Tierney called a staff meeting. In it, he informed those assembled that, at some point in the not-too-distant future, the Daily News will be issued as an “edition” of the Inquirer. Meaning that, in lieu of a “morning edition” or “evening edition” of the Inky (both long since gone, BTW), one of those will be the Daily News. Earlier reports indicated that the DN would be folded into the Inky, but that was quickly clarified to not be the case; from what we gather, the union that represents the employees of Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc., Newspaper Guild Local 38010, has long had language in place to prevent such a thing from happening. Furthermore, we’re also hearing that this new move will bring about no significant distribution or staffing changes; the mantra already being repeated over and again is “The Daily News will remain a separate publication.” There is some speculation that, in view of Phila. Newspapers’ ongoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, the move may in fact be a clever way to cut down on fees from the Associated Press, which presently fleshes out a sizable portion of both papers’ printed and online content. We’ll be following this as the story unfolds.
UPDATE: Here’s the official line.
Previously: Editorial: The 32% Theory
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:58 pm
This past Saturday morning was at Wawa’s doing the Wawa thing when I saw another customer pick up his morning papers.
Philadelphia Daily News
New York Daily News
New York Post
He passed on the Inquirer.
Just sayin’
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:07 pm
I hear ya. It’s hard not to feel like this is all backwards.
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:12 pm
The logic here’s a bit funky. So, they can boast a bigger “combined circulation” to advertisers. That logic only works if advertisers putting an add out to reach that circulation get an ad run in both “editions.” Unless Philadelphia Media Holdings or whatever the front’s called have been making ad sales that go into both papers all along, it sounds like they’re actually slashing revenue for both papers. I’d appreciate it if someone can enlighten me otherwise, but this sounds like “denial accounting” to me.
March 3rd, 2009 at 9:14 am
It’s genius and if they tag The Inquirer, “An edition of the New York Times”, they can present even larger circulation figures to advertisers!
March 3rd, 2009 at 10:37 am
sounds to me like they are trying to save $$$ on ap/wire service subscriptions.