MMMM # 236 -- The Ends of (some) News

     As I predicted, or at least surmised, in last week's MMMM, today is the first day in over a century in which there is no daily newspaper being published in the state's three largest cities.
     The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times, and The Press-Register in Mobile become TDAW--three-day-a-week papers--- today. They'll publish only on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.*
     More than a hundred Alabama journalists, 400 employees in all, were let go. Some had their last day at work on Friday. 
     It is an event only certain politicians and crooks will celebrate. 
     In The Andalusia Star, Michele Gerlach wrote a column that bemoaned the death of veteran journalist Paul Davis and the loss of those  jobs in the same week.

     The changes make The Montgomery Advertiser the largest daily newspaper in the state, though the only related story in the Sunday Advertiser is about the changes at the Times Picayune in New Orleans, and that story is in only the print edition. Online, one of the Advertiser reporters tweeted this question Sunday morning:

Does anyone know of anything going on in Montgomery, Autauga or Elmore today?

      Really.
     At CBS 8, we tired to get an interview with The Advertiser management when the announcement was made four months ago, but no such luck. Ironically, the media itself is the first to refuse comment when they are the story.
     A lot of Alabama folks who grew up with the habit of walking out to the lawn to pick up the paper to read with their morning coffee (as I did this morning) have probably already adjusted to clicking on the mouse instead, but it's still a sad day. 

     The inevitable next step will be the total end to the printing of papers, probably sooner than later, despite the assurances of the the papers' management. And that will truly mark the end of an era.

[*The Star column linked above refers to an "Early Sunday" edition of The Birmingham News to be sold in machines on Saturdays. They apparently realized after their TDAW decision that they would be giving up printing Friday night high school football results without a Saturday print edition. Does that make the News an FDAW paper?]

[PLUS: The reporting on this momentous change has been virtually non-existent, outside specialty journalism publications. The company actually making the changes has published a series of Q and A "columns" that are, of course, relentlessly positive. The columns should have a little type-face Advertisement above them.  Here's a link to the final one for your consideration...and by the way, it makes no mention of an "Early Sunday" edition of The News, so whatever.]

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of www.TimLennox.com.]