It appears to me that from a business-organization standpoint, Parade is helplessly out-of-date.
Consumers of every news outlet demand a certain level of accuracy in reporting, but will exchange that for promptness. Newspapers get a different level of leinency for daily reporting than Time gets for weekly stories. Likewise, newspapers have to be more accurate than on- the-spot reporting from radio and TV. Parade, being a newsmagazine, rightly-or-wrongly, gets lumped into "newspaper" level, though I only seem to remember it for the smart lady column and that guy who fawned over every mid-level celebrity in Hollywood. Oh yeah, and Howard Huge. Having said that, I can't believe that in this day and age, Parade's printing and distribution model is so outdated that they can't respond more efficiently to changing news. Shouldn't they have regional printing facilities to reduce the distribution time? The WSJ, USA Today, NY Times - all the national-level papers do that. Even large regional papers have mid-route distribution centers so that important updates and editions can be sent out quickly rather than from a single printing source. If I'm publishing Parade, I'd make a strategic decision - do we continue to do news-based features, or stick with what we do best - celebrity news, cooking trends and reviewing new products? - Ray Bradley newspaper business consultant --- In [email protected], "Ellen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/columnists/chi- > oped0108mcnultyjan08,0,4830517.column > > this doesn't say whether he thought the Tribune was right or wrong, > just what some of the feedback has been. I wish he would say > definitively that they made a mistake or whatever. They have no > obligation to distribute Parade--explaining the situation via a note in > the paper would have made more sense I think. What would have been the > right course of action in this situation? Parade should have not > distributed it in the first place i think. >
