Denver’s Rocky Mountain News
got a couple hundred complaints recently when it trimmed its printed
stock tables down to one page. (You also may have read about this in Romenesko.) Westword‘s Michael Roberts covered the brouhaha, which resulted in a few dozen subscription cancellations.
Many of the complainers, as you might expect, were older people who’ve
never picked up the Internet habit; some say they don’t want to use the
Internet and don’t like the online world.
So, what’s a newspaper to do? I think that the Rocky
and other newspapers are making the right decision. It’s not a wise
economic choice to continue to devote several pages of newsprint to
stock tables that are relied on only by a small slice of the paper’s
readership. As more and more people use the Web for up-to-date stock
quotes (instead of printed ones that are half a day or more old),
printed stock tables just don’t make sense.
I think that newspaper publishers simply need to accept that they’re
going to have to deal with a small number of unhappy (mostly older)
customers. And, importantly, they should offer a phone-in stocks
service that the un-wired can use (which can be marketed as an
improvement, since phone quotes are timely and print is not). Just
don’t leave those older customers unserved.
Another factor to consider, of course, is the community. Trimming stock
tables from a paper in a big metro market is a no-brainer, but for some
small communities, not so much so. (Consider this.)
