Sun Herald | Willamette Week
Glen Nardi, publisher of McClatchy’s Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., responds to Advance Publications’ decision to cut daily printing of its neighboring newspapers by telling readers that the Sun Herald has no plans to stop printing every day. Print is hardly dead, he writes.
Will readers move from the printed paper to the Internet?
Sure. Some already have.
But after almost 20 years of online access to the Sun Herald, most of our readers still prefer to receive and hold a printed newspaper and we don’t expect that to change for some time. And we’re committed to delivering that newspaper to you every morning of the week.
One last but important point: Although some pundits talk about the Internet “killing” newspapers or the Internet becoming the primary news source, remember this — the Internet has no reporters. So without newspapers, there would be little or no news — professionally investigated and reported news — on the web.
Nardi mentions that The Mississippi Press in Pascagoula, about 20 miles to the east, is one of the papers that is cutting daily printing. The Mississippi Press is considered an edition of The Press-Register in nearby Mobile, Ala., and although its cutbacks have been overshadowed by its larger siblings in New Orleans and Alabama, it’s following the same course. (Advance’s announcements on al.com didn’t mention The Mississippi Press except to say that it will continue to be published as a “standalone edition.”)
Meanwhile, Willamette Week’s Corey Pein notes that OregonLive.com has been retooled with the same template as NOLA.com and al.com, but he adds that other Advance properties have gotten the new look without announcing any cutback in print.
Willamette Week did ask The Oregonian’s publisher, Chris Anderson, whether any big changes were on the horizon. His answer is much livelier than the typical “no comment”:
Do you honestly think I would tell in you advance if any changes were going to be announced?
