What's going on in the Newspaper Biz?

Since I work in the business I get asked often about the state of newspaper industry.

Sure, there is a lot of gloomy news that comes out about the imminent death of newspapers. A few things in my background that help explain the perspective that I view the situation through:

-I grew up in a newspaper household. There was never a time that the newspaper was not a part of the daily routine. In fact, during most of my childhood my parents subscribed to two daily newspapers and read them both every day. At present time, they subscribe to three! They may be single-handedly trying to save the newspaper industry.
-I began working in the industry in 2002. Obviously, this is well past the heyday of the daily newspaper, and well into its decline.
-The vast majority of my newspaper experience has come from working at weekly, or community, newspapers. So although I believe that daily newspapers have a role of importance in today's market, much of my beliefs are not those of your normal newspaper person.

Anyways, the current model of the daily newspaper will not survive. Those that do survive are ones that will adapt, and FAST. It probably means it will no longer be "daily". We've been seeing this already throughout the country. Some papers are eliminating their Monday edition, some are talking of going to 3 or 4 days a week.

To me, less days per week just make sense to me. People are so busy that I just do not think that there are that many people, even among subscribers, that read the paper every single day. I would love to see a real unbiased study done about this. Of course paid daily newspapers would want you to believe that since the readers are paying they each read the paper cover-to-cover every day.

The other major problem (other than frequency) is type of content. Traditionally, the "newspaper" was all inclusive. Your one source for world, national, regional, and local news, in addition to comics, horoscope, crosswords, real estate advertising, automotive advertising, private party advertising, etc.

Well, flash forward to 2009. For all of those things i have just listed, there are more accessible "free" alternatives available online that are the same or better. For example, people browse private party for sale ads on craigslist. You can read your horoscope on any of thousands of websites. Same goes for world news and national news. Your local newspaper offers nothing unique on any of these topics.

With the great exception of one: LOCAL NEWS. Where else are you going to get your local news? CNN, the New York Times, even the Seattle Times, are not sending reporters out to Lynnwood, Bothell, or anywhere, unless something catestrophic were to happen.

So, basically strip away all of the other things about the newspaper that other people are doing bigger and better, and we're left with local news. Which is the most difficult and expensive to produce. This has been a difficult change for daily newspapers to adapt to. It becomes more challenging the larger the distribution area of a daily.

Back to weekly, or community, newspapers. Guess what? Their focus of coverage, and really 95% of their content, is and has always been LOCAL NEWS. We don't have to worry about the competition for content. In most all cases we are the only one with an in-depth article of the High School basketball game. Or about a local resident organizing a fundraiser.

And they are already once a week in most cases. Not content overload, as well as without the overhead of printing and distributing a newspaper every day. The costs of printing and distributing a daily paper alone are a huge burden.

As an interesting side note, the USPS, another institution in very troubling times, is also looking at reducing a day of service.

So that's why I think community newspapers are well positioned to weather the storm.

I haven't even mentioned online. But you can guess where I would go with that - local.

Sushi Land - Lynnwood

Last night I ate at Sushi Land in Lynnwood. It is the 12th and newest of the Puget Sound area Sushi Land locations.

It's your typical conveyor-belt sushi joint, which seem to be springing up as fast as humanly possible. Just goes to show that even in a tough economy, there are some business models that (appear) to be working. As another example, take a look at all the bikini espresso stands that have opened in the past year. But that's another story for another time. . .

Anyways, last night I went with my sister, her husband, and my 16-month old niece. We picked a rather unfortunate evening for my first visit to Sushi Land, as we had to wait over 45 minutes for a table (er, sorry, not a table, but a place on the conveyor line). Yes, it was a Friday night, and it was the first Friday of Lent, but this seemed a little bit outrageous. But the wait was what it was, so we patiently waited for a spot to open up.

The place is actually very small. It's the size of your run of the mill strip-mall teriyaki joint. But even though it's small, they are able to squeeze a lot of seats in.

One of the things that always has bugged me about these kind of sushi places is the bar-style seating. Although many of them (as Sushi Land does) have a few booths, the majority of the seating is facing the conveyor belt. Although this is convenient for grabbing your chow, it does not make for an enjoyable eating atmosphere, especially if you are with more than one other person and want to have any kind of conversation going on. I suppose we could have held out for a table but that may have been another hour or so!

The main draw of Sushi Land, looking past its conveyor-belt format, has to be its prices. This is probably the fourth restaurant of this style I have been to, and the pricing at Sushi Land beats them all hands down.

They had quite a few $1.00 plates, and any that were not were either $1.50 or $2.00. Their most expensive plate is $3.00 but I only saw a few of these.

The sushi all tasted very fresh, however I am sure that had to do with the amount of people eating at the time. I particularly enjoyed the Philly Roll ($1.50 plate for 3 pieces), but my favorite (call me plain) was the House Special. Arriving on the $1.00 plate, it's similar to a California Roll but with the yellow egg-style roll on the outside, and has some regular tuna inside.

Despite the long time to get a table, the service was actually pretty good once we were seating, taking into consideration the volume of patrons. My brother in law had several special requests for the chefs, and they handled them all in a timely fashion.

Sushi Land will compete directly with Blue C Sushi, which opened around a year ago at the Alderwood Mall (or Alderwood as they would like us all to call it) over in the newer area of outdoor stores on the North side of the campus. Blue C is a fine place to eat as well, it is also pretty small inside (maybe that's the model of these businesses) and can be pretty busy at times. The main difference I saw was the prices at Blue C were on average quite a bit higher. A $1 or $1.50 plate at Sushi Land would probably be $2 or $3 at Blue C.

Overall, it cost me just over $10, but had 8 plates of stuff. Not bad. I'll be back.

OK enough Sushi talk for one day!

Website: http://www.sushilandusa.com/

44 Presidents by Rhythm, Rhyme, Results

A fun way to memorize the presidents. This is one of the few things that has stuck with me since my childhood, I can still recite the "44 presidents" (of course it was not quite that many when I was younger).

Two shibas

Champion Grocery Outlet

I stumbled upon this great little gem in Issaquah today. Well, actually I was taken there by one of our local sales reps at our Issaquah Reporter newspaper.

What I found is a great little store that is kind of like a cross between the Grocery Outlet chains and an organic food store. They have lots of gluten-free, organic, and some plain old regular foods.

I would put up a picture of the outside of the store, but I don't have one. Actually, it's better that I don't. They're not much to look at from the outside. But once inside, you'll find the store quite large.

Some of my deals of the day: Tortilla chips, large bag for 50 cents. Big bags of granola, for $1.50 - $2.50. All sorts of deals. Anyways here's a link to their review page on yelp since they don't have a website. Maybe I'll review them on yelp someday if I'm not too lazy :)

http://www.yelp.com/biz/champion-grocery-outlet-issaquah

1981 primitive Internet report on KRON