3 ms·

"didn't even have the budget to syndicate horoscopes" A clear sign, and only 14y later they closed.

by _Codemonkeyism 8y ago

chillwaves 8y ago
No doubt predicted by the horoscope.
- iCannotEven 8y ago
  Okay, like I give a fuck. Go back and look at the moment in time when they changed formats. They dropped a bunch of extras, and their journalism got bland when they stopped paying for good people. It was obvious that there were cut budgets behind the scenes. The paper was thinner and smaller, and a number of regular columns and features dried up. The most visible difference was that after you flipped past the table of contents, you saw no comic strips, and flipping through the concert section, the end of the section was no longer the horoscopes, and it ran directly into the red light district, so to speak.
coldtea 8y ago
>A clear sign, and only 14y later they closed. For someone who knows the industry, such a sign is not as irrelevant as it appears - nor is closing down a sudden affair. Unlike SV startups which can fold in 1-2 years, news outlets are surprisingly resilient in their dying. It's a long process of decay with several milestones along the way... As someone that has worked in the print business, and am familiar with the history of lots of businesses (although in a different country), alot of media businesses had a decade or more of struggling before they finally give up the ghost -- and it indeed starts with signs like these (first they cut some expensive syndications, a first round of lay-offs, then they give up some subscriptions to news services like A.P. and Reuters, call off special reporters stationed abroad, a few major columns are cancelled because they can afford their top columnists, the quality of photography drops, and so on. In the end, the content is mostly sloppy rewrites from whatever wire service they still have, plus amateur "opinion pieces", then a final round of layoffs, and they die... The cancelling one or more expensive features, like syndications, are a sure fire sign of a decay process starting...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- bena 8y ago
  You're getting into some really sketchy territory though. For it to be a sign, it has to be consistent. The vast majority has to follow the rule. Exceptions need to be rare. Otherwise, it's pretty much just anti-survivor bias. Yes, all failed magazines did these things, but doing that thing doesn't mean your magazine is failing if all magazines do it. Or if enough successful magazines do it. 14 years is a long time. It would be like saying water is deadly because everyone alive who has ever drank it has died or will die in about 100 years or so. Or everybody who has ever gotten divorced was married at one point. So marriage is a sure sign of an inevitable divorce.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >For it to be a sign, it has to be consistent. The vast majority has to follow the rule. Exceptions need to be rare. Exceptions are rare. Flaying outlets invariably go through those moves. >14 years is a long time "long" makes sense only relatively. For some things the time from writing on the wall to dying off is in that order, and media outlets are one of those things. I already explained how a SV startup for example can die in 1-2 years (because VC money dry off etc), but established news outlets die much more slowly, in the span of a decade or more. It's something I've witnessed unravel from inside and from friends inside with dozens of outlets in my country, and I've seen from afar the same path followed in several others in the US and elsewhere. >Yes, all failed magazines did these things, but doing that thing doesn't mean your magazine is failing if all magazines do it. Well, all magazines don't do it. Few do it without such reasons.
    - bena 8y ago
      You've made those claims, yes. The distance between cause and effect is great. 14 years is long enough for a child to be conceived and start attending high school. That's not insignificant. My points were: That on a long enough timeline, everything fails. Which I illustrated by showing that everyone who has drank water has died or will die in a specific time frame. You need to see where you're wrong as well as where you're right. Which I illustrated by pointing out every divorce begins in marriage. It's technically true, but marriage holds no predictive power because plenty of marriages succeed. For something to be a sign, it needs to be common in one group and rare in another. So giving up horoscopes needs to be common in failed magazines and rare in successful ones. And something I didn't really illustrate too well: it needs to have a strong correlation both ways. In other words not only do the vast majority of magazines that give up horoscopes need to fail, the vast majority of magazines that fail need to give up horoscopes. And the lifespan of the average publication must be far greater than 14 years. Or even a decade using your timetable. Because if most publications fail within that time, then you could literally point to anything and call it a sign. All of it needs to be true.

"didn't even have the budget to syndicate horoscopes" A clear sign, and only 14y later they closed.

chillwaves 8y ago

No doubt predicted by the horoscope.

iCannotEven 8y ago
Okay, like I give a fuck. Go back and look at the moment in time when they changed formats. They dropped a bunch of extras, and their journalism got bland when they stopped paying for good people. It was obvious that there were cut budgets behind the scenes. The paper was thinner and smaller, and a number of regular columns and features dried up. The most visible difference was that after you flipped past the table of contents, you saw no comic strips, and flipping through the concert section, the end of the section was no longer the horoscopes, and it ran directly into the red light district, so to speak.

coldtea 8y ago

>A clear sign, and only 14y later they closed. For someone who knows the industry, such a sign is not as irrelevant as it appears - nor is closing down a sudden affair. Unlike SV startups which can fold in 1-2 years, news outlets are surprisingly resilient in their dying. It's a long process of decay with several milestones along the way... As someone that has worked in the print business, and am familiar with the history of lots of businesses (although in a different country), alot of media businesses had a decade or more of struggling before they finally give up the ghost -- and it indeed starts with signs like these (first they cut some expensive syndications, a first round of lay-offs, then they give up some subscriptions to news services like A.P. and Reuters, call off special reporters stationed abroad, a few major columns are cancelled because they can afford their top columnists, the quality of photography drops, and so on. In the end, the content is mostly sloppy rewrites from whatever wire service they still have, plus amateur "opinion pieces", then a final round of layoffs, and they die... The cancelling one or more expensive features, like syndications, are a sure fire sign of a decay process starting...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bena 8y ago
You're getting into some really sketchy territory though. For it to be a sign, it has to be consistent. The vast majority has to follow the rule. Exceptions need to be rare. Otherwise, it's pretty much just anti-survivor bias. Yes, all failed magazines did these things, but doing that thing doesn't mean your magazine is failing if all magazines do it. Or if enough successful magazines do it. 14 years is a long time. It would be like saying water is deadly because everyone alive who has ever drank it has died or will die in about 100 years or so. Or everybody who has ever gotten divorced was married at one point. So marriage is a sure sign of an inevitable divorce.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >For it to be a sign, it has to be consistent. The vast majority has to follow the rule. Exceptions need to be rare. Exceptions are rare. Flaying outlets invariably go through those moves. >14 years is a long time "long" makes sense only relatively. For some things the time from writing on the wall to dying off is in that order, and media outlets are one of those things. I already explained how a SV startup for example can die in 1-2 years (because VC money dry off etc), but established news outlets die much more slowly, in the span of a decade or more. It's something I've witnessed unravel from inside and from friends inside with dozens of outlets in my country, and I've seen from afar the same path followed in several others in the US and elsewhere. >Yes, all failed magazines did these things, but doing that thing doesn't mean your magazine is failing if all magazines do it. Well, all magazines don't do it. Few do it without such reasons.
  - bena 8y ago
    You've made those claims, yes. The distance between cause and effect is great. 14 years is long enough for a child to be conceived and start attending high school. That's not insignificant. My points were: That on a long enough timeline, everything fails. Which I illustrated by showing that everyone who has drank water has died or will die in a specific time frame. You need to see where you're wrong as well as where you're right. Which I illustrated by pointing out every divorce begins in marriage. It's technically true, but marriage holds no predictive power because plenty of marriages succeed. For something to be a sign, it needs to be common in one group and rare in another. So giving up horoscopes needs to be common in failed magazines and rare in successful ones. And something I didn't really illustrate too well: it needs to have a strong correlation both ways. In other words not only do the vast majority of magazines that give up horoscopes need to fail, the vast majority of magazines that fail need to give up horoscopes. And the lifespan of the average publication must be far greater than 14 years. Or even a decade using your timetable. Because if most publications fail within that time, then you could literally point to anything and call it a sign. All of it needs to be true.