All the News That Fits the Horse-Drawn Cart – The Digital Journalist

The horse has escaped the barn, but almost all the discussions over the years as newspapers began their downward slide failed to acknowledge, or even seemed to grasp in some cases, that “newspapers” are, in essence, really TWO businesses – the “front half” and the “back half.” The “front half” is the news operation, with reporters and photographers leaving the building to report and editors in the office who package that news, and the business office where ads and subscriptions are sold. The “back half” involves trade union workers – pressmen and such – who take the news operation’s pictures and ads into a production facility not that far removed from the 19th-century “hot-type” era of linotype machines and newsprint rolls weighing a ton or more each, printing inks and giant presses, where they manufacture the actual “product” that gets trucked away by union drivers (some making six-figure salaries) to distribution points.

Link: All the News That Fits the Horse-Drawn Cart – The Digital Journalist