Published since 1971, the Chicago Reader is widely recognized as one of the leading alternative weeklies in the U.S. It specializes in features rather than news, with emphasis on urban issues and politics, arts and culture, and literary journalism that seeks to capture the spirit of contemporary city life. The paper has won numerous journalistic awards and honors, both local and national, and is well-known as a showcase for Chicago’s most talented writers, critics, photographers, and illustrators.
The Reader is also well-known for its indispensable guides to Chicago theater, film, arts, and music, and for an extensive classified advertising section that focuses on the needs of young urban adults. It is a controlled-circulation newspaper distributed primarily in city neighborhoods where young people live in high concentrations.
Where can you find the Reader?
The Reader is distributed at more than 1,400 locations; distribution begins on Thursday and is completed by Friday at 2 PM. The average circulation of the Reader for the six months ending June 30, 2004 was 119,606. Circulation figures are audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). {snip}
Jesus, they’re nothing but a popsicle stand, as far as media goes…it no wonder they can’t handle the Straight Dope. I doubt they can even keep coffee in the office.
You’re missing the point in a quite spectacular way. This board was not set up to make the Reader a profit. Making money from internet subscriptions is not how the Reader makes its money. This place is a spin-off, which could be regarded as (a) a cash-cow, (b) something to tolerate as long as it is not a drain, or (c) advertising & PR. It’s not clear which it is supposed to be, due to the mixed messages and lack of clear information from the mods. And I never said there was an obligation for them to provide the information, but whenever I have suggested that it would be helpful to provide it to prevent some of the discontent we see, I’ve never even seen an explanation on why this is not possible.
Again, this is the point. None of us know what we’re dealing with, because nobody who knows will provide fairly basic information when we ask for it. And your reply also demonstrates the smugness of the “this place is great” attitude which permeates through many of the replies these discussions attract. Just because a place is popular, doesn’t mean it’s as good as it good be, nor does it mean it will stay as popular.
But I think we kind of agree…sort of. I agree that it’s pretty magnanimous of them to do the SDMB, considering they have the circulation of a school paper.
I don’t know if you guys are being ironic or not, and I’m not wise enough about the newspaper industry to know if that’s a large circulation. But the Reader is one of those free papers, right? I’m sure if it is, this is an impressive board. The local alt rag had such a board here in Habitrail City, which I used to frequent. It was a free affair that had a good community of like 40 people, and was shut down – I kid you not – because one asshole kept coming back under different user names and posting porn. They didn’t know how to handle it and didn’t want to deal with it. The Dope board has put up with a lot more crap than that and has a much higher membership.
I don’t think we came to opposite conclusions. The conclusion is, I think, that the Chicago Reader is a weekly alternative paper with a circulation of 119,000, and that for them, maintaining the SDMB is a pretty significant endeavor.
Before I went to that cite, I didn’t really know how small-time they were. Mea Culpa for not knowing that. However, as much as I now feel sorry for them, the bottom line is that they’re extremely small potatoes, and they simply don’t (and never will) have to money to do it any differently, if at all.
The value of a good or service is based on the amount people are willing to pay crossed with the amount the seller is willing to sell for. While the costs to create the service certainly factor into the sellers part of the bargain, it isn’t really any of the consumer’s business. It doesn’t matter if you are being lied to about the cost. All it matters is if the service offered is worth the cost of admission to you.
At the moment the Reader is not happy with their side of the slope. Its option is to find more revenue or to shut it down. Whether we think they should be happy with their side of the equation is irrelevant.
If you are unhappy with the costs, you have an option.
I am agreeing with ** Sam Stone** color me scared.
So now you’re an expert in the Reader’s business model too?
Well, that just about covers all the bases. It’s either here to make profit, or not, or to work as advertising and PR, or not.
Frankly, I don’t care if the Reader set up this board because the staff likes to walk by the server every half hour and be mesmerized by the blinking hard drive light. It’s none of my damned business, and none of yours. They’re offering a product for a price. WHY they offer it matters not one bit. Maybe it started out as PR, and they discovered that that PR wasn’t worth it. So they decided to try to supplement the PR with some income as an alternative to shutting it down. Again, that’s really irrelevant. As a consumer, I have to decide if this place is worth $7.48 per year. It is, so I subscribe. Is this really that hard a concept to grasp?
I do think the Reader’s staff made a mistake in trying to justify the subscription by claiming the board runs at a loss, that they just need to recoup expenses, etc. That probably comes from the same impulse that makes the Reader an ‘alternative’ paper in the first place. They should have just said, “We have decided to charge X as an alternative to shutting down this board” and left it at that. We really don’t need to know the details of the Reader’s financials.
The wonderful thing about capitalism is that it is very democratic. Every time you spend your dollar on one product instead of another, you cast a ‘vote’ for that product. If you don’t like the price, don’t pay it. If enough people agree, the Reader will either lower the price or shut the board down. That’s the way it works.
And if that’s not enough power for you, then feel free to set up your own messsage board and compete with them. If you think you have all the answers, then you should be able to do a better job of running your board than the Reader does theirs, and take away their customers. More power to you.
Yeah, but the most robust weekly metro style paper is a popsicle stand in the world of media conglomerates.
We can all quibble over this stuff, but who here wants to assert that the Chicago Reader stacks up in the big bad media world? It’s just not that big, period.
I, though, did come to the conclusion, albeit like ten minutes ago, that their running this boards is a pretty significant endeavor. I just didn’t say they throw pretty good for a girl, or somesuch.
I’m an independent contractor. The Reader pays me an incremental amount of money to administer the online Straight Dope. If the online Straight Dope goes away, I don’t get this money. The amount isn’t huge but isn’t trivial either. These are tough times for the newspaper business; the Reader has been trying to cut costs. In a discussion recently with Reader management, the statement was made that while there are no immediately plans to pull the plug on SD website, the costs associated with it are “low hanging fruit.”
As for Jerry, he’s on staff, gets paid a salary, and would have plenty to do whether the Straight Dope had a website or not. That’s the point. Every hour he and the rest of the IT staff spends on us is one hour less for projects with a bigger payoff for the Reader. Jerry’s been trying to keep his involvement with the SDMB to a minimum but still has to do the backups, run the reports, tweak the code, go to meetings, and answer frantic e-mails from the staff about why the board is running slowly, why the timestamp is off by an hour, etc. This is figured into the cost of operating the board.
If by ‘expert’ you mean ‘know that the Reader is in the business of publishing newspapers’, then yes. :rolleyes:
The risk some of us are concerned with is the vicious circle of some people deciding to quit this place, making it less attractive to the remainder, so more quit…
If it’s not a main part of their business (are you claiming that it is?), then none of this necessarily applies.
Yawn. That’s been said already, a few posts back. I don’t eat in McDonalds because I think the food tastes awful, but you’re not going to tell me that I don’t deserve to say that until I’ve set up my own worldwide fast food business, are you?
I’ll shut up now. I’ve got things on my plate that make me angry, and I shouldn’t be posting while so.
My initial reaction was visceral, but after some looking into it, I think that the Reader is certainly stretching to do this, and I can’t really expect them to.
Yeah, well, my hovercraft is full of eels!
And, FWIW, I think Sam Stone makes some excellent points here, as well as Ed Zotti.
I don’t see how, as a customer of a private company, I’m owed much of anything. I tend to sit firmly in the “change sucks” camp, but I’m not going to get mad about it, because things will change regardless, whether it be new google ads, or a new tone on the board due to fresh blood and attrition. If there is ever a point at which I don’t feel I’m getting my money’s worth out of the boards, I’ll cease renewing. But, I don’t in any way feel lied to or cheated at this point in time.
Either the servers are often overloaded (as we are often told, and as we often experience), or it’s possible to measure traffic. You can’t do both.
Also, as subscriptions are annual, any trends will only be identifiable after three, four, five years. By which point it will be too late to change, if things are wrong.
Nope. That’d be the rest of your post, where you invent a bunch of fictitious high-end hardware and attempt to claim that’s what’s behind these forums.
Kind of like how we tell people who complain that some part if their life is off limits here: then don’t fucking bring it up. They brought it up, publicly, and they started the cries of being underfunded. Now, since they offer no proof of those claims, and since I have a background in IT and have dealt with equipment and communications costs and budgets for tech upgrades, I’m telling them their claims smell like something that came out of a horse’s ass.
Multiplying the number of subscribers at $14.95 (which you gave us) by $14.95, then multiplying the number of subscribers at $7.48 (which you also gave us) by $7.48 and adding the two results together is hardly ‘dart board’. It’s simple mathematics. Although it is funny when you practically admit that this entire advertising thing is very directly about putting more money in your pocket, or at least assuring that the ‘not trivial’ sum going in there now keeps going in.
Considering the complete lack of common courtesy you seem to show customers, why the hell should we be happy about making sure the SDMB money stays in your pocket?
With your attitude, arrogance and obvious contempt for the customers? If someone gave you a dime for this, they gave you too damn much.
I wasn’t pissed off until I read this thread. Apparently I am one of the few paying the full 15 bucks. What a sucker :smack: (I also bought one of those mailing lists below and I’m not even in the business) The Google ads are unobtrusive, 15 bucks is still a bargain, and it’s clear that since its inception the SDMB has maintained a nice balance between communal altruism and business necessity. I trust these people because they have earned it.