The New York Times | Capital New York
The chief content officer for NJ.com told David Carr that the website is building up its online reporting, not preparing to cut back on print at Advance Publications’ 12 papers in New Jersey. That speculation was spurred by Lamar Graham’s post on Facebook that he’s looking for reporters and by recent news that two AnnArbor.com execs are now at NJ.com. Ann Arbor was one of the first places the company tried its Web-first, print less approach, in which it stopped daily printing, cut staff, and focused on AnnArbor.com.
When Carr contacted Graham, he said:
“I was brought in to turn NJ.com into more of a news-gathering operation in areas that are outside the core coverage of the newspapers,” he said. “I am not a tea leaf reader, but we don’t anticipate any changes with our New Jersey newspapers, which are the source of a lot of content and value on the site.”
Carr did not appear to be convinced, writing that “the build-out of additional Web news as a supplement to newspapers has not been the trend at Advance.”
Capital’s Joe Pompeo says cutbacks at Advance’s papers in New Jersey would hurt:
The prospect of reducing the frequency of say, The Star Ledger, New Jersey’s most august paper and the only one that seriously covers the state up and down, would seem a deadly blow to Jersey news, which has already suffered in recent years due to steep cuts at other dailies, such as those owned by Gannett. It would even be hard to imagine a much smaller Advance paper like The Jersey Journal cutting back on its print edition, which has become an anemic tabloid and a shell of its former self, but is nonetheless the only daily paper devoted primarily to covering New Jersey’s most populous area, Hudson County.
Earlier: Will other Advance newspapers face cuts like Times-Picayune, Alabama papers?
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