The Newspaper That Almost Seized The Future

cjr.org:

The story of the Merc's rise and decline--there is nothing so telling as only four pages of midweek classifieds--mirrors the story of what has occurred at so many once big and proud newspapers across the country that are still trying to make sense of what happened to them over the past decade and what lessons might be drawn from all the cataclysmic change.

Read the whole story: cjr.org

Comments

[gypsy508]

11:44 AM on 11/14/2011

The Mercury News being sold to a lesser chain had much to do with it's fall.

[Foodgrade]

08:41 PM on 11/11/2011

Almost. Then they caved to the CIA over their crack trade in the cities to finance Reagans illegal war.

[TJ Logan]

03:51 PM on 11/11/2011

After subscribing to the Merc for over 30 years, this year I did not renew.

The once proud paper was in the old days full of news and its coverage of technology often ran to dozens of pages. Its foreign coverage was great, and unlike its name it was not a San Jose paper at all, but a powerful regional paper about to become national.

Then began the decline which some papers such as the NY Times and the WSJ seem to have managed.

The paper withdrew from regional coverage and increasingly focused on San Jose, a city in which I have no interest living 30 miles to the north. The business section withered and the tech section became one or two pages of drivel.

When the management, following some sage advise from some newspaper turn around company, moved local sports to the front page, I sighed and gave up.

Many will blame the internet for the demise of the Merc, but I am not so sanguine. I suspect that a fundamental missunderstanding of the Merc's mission is what brought it down.

That mission was to provide "comprehensive news coverage" to the entire Northern California region and in this it failed.