Any business is about making money. Newspapers are a business.
10-4, hear you
Well let’s try to change that.
To get the resources dedicated to this endeavor we have to show the potential audience. That’s just the truth of the matter.
there’ll be some content coming.
Shall see.
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Well there you have your answer. We are not going to trump SEC B10 and ACC news. Neither will JCSU or App or Davidson, etc. drop the charade about caring about the Charlotte market and just go make money.
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No I didn’t say that NinerWup. It’s not about trumping anything. If there is audience for Charlotte, we’ll skate to where the puck is absolutely. ACC coverage we get from Raleigh. No manpower issues for us and the content has a very large audience, here and there.
It’s not about Duke or UNC or Wake or State, we’re talking 49ers. Green and gold.
That’s what matters.
Persinger told us the “CHARLOTTE” Observer was a “regional” paper and couldn’t cover the Forty Niners like a hometown paper because they had too much on their plate.
Has this attitude changed?
LW, I don’t know Persinger personally, I just know how he was toward us back in the day. He was an absolute condescending jerk that talked down to us and wanted us to stay in the place he thought we should be in. Which was way below his beloved Heels and the ACC.
I believe you when you say times and attitudes have changed, nothing I have said or will say is anything personal towards you.
If we can find audience with Charlotte, there will be more coverage. I can’t speak for Mike, who is a friend and a pretty cool dude, but I cannot dispute what you guys say occurred here. I didn’t see it and don’t know the context. And from his seat, I can’t tell you what the view looked like.
Just saying rehashing the past I think is fine. I think you all had to get stuff off your chests. I’m saying let’s try to start leaving that stuff there — please say your piece and get it all out now — and then let’s move on.
Trying to carve out a path to better.
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I said it earlier in this thread and I’ll say it again to summarize - The CHARLOTTE Observer needs the CHARLOTTE 49ers more than we need them. That’s why Langston is here.
The newspaper industry is dying and the Observer is certainly part of that. Just look at what the print edition has become over the last few years. There’s nothing in it. My own hometown paper, the Times-News, is succumbing to the same thing. They put so many resources into covering Wake, Chapel Hill, Duke, and State when you could get that coverage from the Journal, the Herald, and the N&O. Now they are trying to save face by finally covering Elon and high school sports, which is what they should have been doing all along. The Observer is a local newspaper (whether they want to admit it or not) and to survive they need to start covering local things for interest. That’s why Langston is here. But Mike P ruined that relationship years ago and I’m not sure it can be repaired.
This whole thread is a joke and LW is trolling (I believe he is who he says he is but disagree this is a good-faith discussion). What can we do to get you to read our dying paper more? Write more articles about our athletic teams/university. Those aren’t popular, so no. Well then go away.
There was an article in the sports section this week about ACC women’s tennis. If that is truly more popular than writing a pregame or postgame article on the hometown team’s effort to stay in first place in their conference, then there is no more discussion to be had. You will just try to convince us to subscribe to your paper while not writing articles and we will keep say we’re not coming back until you write the articles.
I’m not trolling.
Again, we get ACC content from a sister paper. Why not use it?
But I do get where you guys are coming from. I want to try to change it
I hear you but we are getting two different answers. One is we go with what makes money. The other is we want to cover Charlotte.
I get the revenue argument. Its a business. If the metric is clicks though we aren’t going to win this because the other brands have more pull. If it’s we cover Charlotte because it’s in our community then clicks shouldn’t be the primary driver.
Most of us come from a place of we are the hometown team that should get coverage regardless.
I think the bottom line is the Observer lost the 49er fans ON PURPOSE, through willful neglect. It’s a bit much to expect folks who have learned to live with this neglect; and who found other, cheaper, outlets, to suddenly want to come back to the O simply on the promise of more 49ers content.
The Observer will need to put out YEARS of consistent coverage to ever get that audience back.
Not sure you guys have that kind of patience and time.
I don’t even click on O 49er stories because I know it’s behind a paywall, so there’s no way to know what the market for 49er articles even looks like.
I hear you 49R, hope everybody isn’t the same.
It’s both NinerWup. I think and have long thought we should cover Charlotte b/c it’s the right thing to do and we can earn audience and revenue from it. That’s about as honest as I can be.
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Langston,
I don’t know if you are even still reading these, but I just wanted to give you my own perspective. I started at Charlotte in the fall of 2010. David Scott did a pretty good job I thought, but reading this board and others, there was already a very stale taste in people’s mouths about the Observer.
I have no idea what was actually covered and was not in the “Glory Days” for the Charlotte 49ers. I define that as 1988-2004. But I can tell you anybody that was around long enough to remember that time is not coming back. Someone referred to our fans as the “Philadelphia Eagles fans of Tobacco Road” during that time period. People here are proud of that. And I don’t think they are too keen on the observer.
Langston, I think the biggest reason you are here is because the Observer needs new subscriptions. Unfortunately, print media is a dying medium. I do think that the coverage last fall and into basketball season was the best it’s been in my time following the program. It’s not even close. Unfortunately, I think you are dealing with a group of people that would rather watch King Louis be lead to the guillotine than work with him on his policy. When the local paper didn’t cover us, other mediums were created. Agent 49 gets us information, this website gets us information, and honestly the Charlotte Post, especially under Ashley Mahooney crushed you guys over the years in the exposure they gave us. So with all these other mostly free mediums, most of our fans aren’t willing to pay a subscription for information that we already have.
Candidly, this feels like the local paper’s attempt to go back to being a local paper, when for the last several years, the Observer has felt much more like a regional paper. I understand that UNC, and NC State get more clicks, and that’s fine. But I think what you guys need now is local viewership and subscriptions, which, with all due respect hasn’t really been the goal of the paper the last several years from where I’m sitting, and perception is reality. I don’t think it’s at all surprising that this group of people is cheering on the sinking of the titanic.
As a local paper reader, I do hate that for you all, but to be candid, I get it. Why would I pay for a subscription for coverage that I know I can get for free from other places, from sources that, with all due respect, have done a better job than you all in my entire tenure here?
Now the local high school sports coverage is great! I read most of those articles. There is a clearly defined plan and dedication to the local high schools, and you guys I’m sure get subscriptions based on that. I’d bet good money that your high school stories get more “clicks” than the 49er ones.
I still want to know, how do you go to the O site and click on a Charlotte article and there is no Charlotte article on the site?
This proves our point. Langston screams for clicks and that they can’t “Promote” anything. But that’s exactly what they do with highschool coverage…they PROMOTE the hell out of it. And the result…CLICKS and INTEREST.
Whatever clicks make the highschool coverage worthwhile for you will be obliterated if you cover us with the same passion and PROMOTE us in the same manner.
So that’s the answer (we’ve been saying it all along btw) and you already have a model that proves that local promotion garners clicks…or else you wouldn’t cover it, right??
If it works for local highschool coverage just imagine what that same mindset/principle would do if applied to a 30,000 student D1 AAC University.
imFromClayton, still reading. Does the Observer want subscriptions? Sure they do. Does Chick Fil A want to sell sandwiches?
That’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I want to be. No one asked me to. Print is a dying medium, no doubt. The Observer is far more a digital company than a print one and that trend will only continue.
Glad you saw the coverage last fall. I wish more did.
And yes I do realize I’m talking to folks who, your words “would rather watch King Louis led to the guillotine”
I can’t speak to what other mediums have done. I’ve not seen it.
Is The Observer trying to be a local paper again? We’ve always been one. We cover a regional market, but Charlotte’s in the heart of it and on the masthead.
Also the goal of the paper, from a business standpoint, has always been to get subs and viewership. That’s nothing new. That’s not some “gotcha.”
Again, I’d like to see us cover the 49ers. I know what it would take to bring it back. I’m just sharing it. Judging by my emails, a few 49ers fans are interested, which is good. I know all of them won’t be, but all I can is try. Maybe I will fail.
Just been something on my mind, so I dropped in.
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