Omaha World Herald Near Death

Lee Enterprises Raped the Newspaper

Update: apparently a farmer in Indiana disrupted and prevented the Public Pulse from being published on Sunday. Was he upset about Nebraska Cornhuskers beating Indiana? Watch the Omaha World-Herald for upcoming details.

Today, the Omaha World-Herald died as there was no Public Pulse. Oh, the irony. Lee Enterprises takes the ad dollars and lets the paper die. There are so many things which have been done wrong.

People are willing to pay for in-depth local news, yet Lee Enterprises heavily borrows from “wire services” such as Associated Press and Reuters. No one needs such news as there are plenty of outlets for it. Local news is what people want. To make matters worse, the national corporate media is so blatantly partisan, many readers rather put bleach in their eyes instead of reading it.

The loss of Jeff Koterba and the cartoons and other items turned the Herald into useful emergency toilet paper. The abandonment of the Public Pulse on Mondays only solidified the disconnect between the publisher and the readers. I guess they decided they could not compete with Facebook.

I find myself hunting down other sources as local writers are trying to fill in. Noise Omaha has their site https://www.noiseomaha.com/ and the Reader has theirs at https://thereader.com/

Everyone knows about Nebraska Examiner (https://nebraskaexaminer.com/) and Flatwater Press (https://flatwaterfreepress.org/) doing the local coverage but in many ways, local television stations run better websites (https://fox42kptm.com/ and https://www.wowt.com/ and https://www.ketv.com and https://www.3newsnow.com/).

Lee Enterprises’ marketing to digital subscribers is idiotic and stupid. One dollar for six months?!?!? No wonder they can’t hire enough local writers. How do they exist in the internet age? How about this: offer 6 months for $10? Hey, I just increased your revenue stream by 90 percent! They provide few options for subscribers. No wonder the company had to lay off 400 staffers this year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Enterprises)!

The real sad part is reporting local news can be done on the cheap. Cover local government and check local officials' websites and report on what is said. A publisher could merely put out a list of stories needing coverage and pay people $5 to send in a paragraph of what went on. A person can see government assemblies online, put it at 1.5 speed, and put out a report on it. Publish the stories and tell readers who got paid for them. The public could comment and rate stories for accuracy and add additional information. How difficult does this need to be?

So if you are still one of the last survivors reading the Herald, I invite you to join this group on MeWe to follow what is going on with the Herald.

https://mewe.com/group/6339ab8b2027ae460a731e78