Kansas City rag printed in Des Moines

[neech]

My parents as well as most of my neighbors subscribed to this back in the day, now you're lucky to count on one hand all the subscribers that you know of or at least care to admit it.


KANSAS CITY, Mo. — There’s a new real estate listing for one of Kansas City’s most recognizable buildings. For sale or for lease, it’s the building formerly used to print The Kansas City Star newspaper.

The giant building is located at 1601 McGee Street. The newspaper still uses office space at the location but has previously announced its intentions to vacate the building by the end of 2021.

Certain things have already changed. For example, Kansas City Star newspapers are now printed in Des Moines and trucked in to subscribers early in the morning. The last newspaper printed at the building covered Super Bowl Sunday.

Previously reported by the Kansas City Star, the printing transition means 68 full-time and 56 part-time employees were planned to be laid off. These changes came as the Star’s parent company McClatchy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection one year ago.

https://fox4kc.com/business/with-pri...s-up-for-sale/

[Pitt Gorilla]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Yep.

The Register sucks as a paper but Gannett runs that press day and night for anybody that will pay.

It still seems odd to me that it SAVES money to truck the papers in daily.

[RINGLEADER]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

If this hadn't happened to every other newspaper in the America, you might have a point but as usual, everything you post is politicalized and uninformed.

Newspapers have been dying a slow death this the turn of this century and the blame lies squarely with the publishers. Instead of monetizing their websites from Day 1, they instead allowed everyone to read the same exact content online for free for the better part of two decades or more.

Just as it happened with the music business and Napster, Limewire and all of the other 90's file sharing services, once people had "free" access to music, sales dropped dramatically and the business lost tens of millions if not billions. Now, there's a generation of people that believe that music should be "free" and refuse to pay for it, even at 99 cents a song.

The newspaper and magazine industry waited way too long to implement online subscriptions and now, they're closer to death than ever before. These paywalls have been popping up everywhere, whether it's the KC Star or Sports Illustrated, which announced a Paywall Coming Soon and other sites. And due to their loss of revenue, newspapers and magazine publishers have lost their best writers to subscription websites, while most people balk at the idea of paying anywhere from $1 dollar to $10 dollars per month for a service that was free of charge for nearly 2 decades.

But sure, blame the content.

Don’t underestimate the impact that Craigslist had on classified advertising which was a huge revenue source for most metropolitan newspapers. Remember back in the day when there was page after page after page after page of nothing but classifieds. On Sundays there would be an entire section of the paper dedicated to small ads. Craigslist showed up and pretty much over night people stopped advertising.

[displacedinMN]

Originally Posted by RINGLEADER

Don’t underestimate the impact that Craigslist had on classified advertising which was a huge revenue source for most metropolitan newspapers. Remember back in the day when there was page after page after page after page of nothing but classifieds. On Sundays there would be an entire section of the paper dedicated to small ads. Craigslist showed up and pretty much over night people stopped advertising.

Job boards too. No one looks for jobs in the paper anymore. I remember looking for teaching positions in the DSM paper every sunday. That was big.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by RINGLEADER

Don’t underestimate the impact that Craigslist had on classified advertising which was a huge revenue source for most metropolitan newspapers. Remember back in the day when there was page after page after page after page of nothing but classifieds. On Sundays there would be an entire section of the paper dedicated to small ads. Craigslist showed up and pretty much over night people stopped advertising.

Yep, good point.

I used The Recycler from 1993 to around 2003 to buy and sell recording gear, then suddenly, it was dead as well due to Craigslist.

[ping2000]

Originally Posted by Pitt Gorilla

It still seems odd to me that it SAVES money to truck the papers in daily.

You could haul all the papers the Star sells in a Prius.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

[displacedinMN]

The iconic glass and copper glass building stretching two blocks that houses the Kansas City Star newspaper — which opened to much fanfare in 2006 as part of a $200 million investment, complete with the installation of brand-new web offset printing presses — has been sold. According to an article in the paper, printing of the newspaper will be outsourced to the Des Moines Register Star, a Gannett paper, effective the first quarter of 2021.

As a result, the Star reported that 68 full-time and 56 part-time production workers will lose their jobs. The presses in Kansas City had also printed local and national editions of several newspapers, including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and others.

Founded in 1880 and formerly owned by the Knight Ridder chain, the Star was acquired by the McClatchy Co. in 2006. McClatchy — which owns 30 newspapers, including The Miami Herald — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February. McClatchy was then purchased by hedge fund Chatham Asset Management in September for $312 million, the Star article indicated.

This latest newspaper printing shutdown and outsourcing agreement follows similar consolidation moves across the company that I reported on recently. These include the impending closure of the 674,000-sq.-ft. Philadelphia Inquirer printing plant, with nine press lines, located just outside of Philadelphia, which prints The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, impacting more than 500 production workers. Those daily papers will be outsourced to another Gannett facility located in nearby Cherry Hill, N.J.

Similarly, News Corp plans to shift the production of print editions of The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and the New York Post to The New York Times’ College Point plant in Queens, N.Y., which also already prints Newsday, a daily newspaper serving Long Island. The relocation to the Queens operation by early next year will result in the closure of News Corp's 400,000-sq.-ft. printing facility in the Bronx, where the publications have been printed since 2001. The Bronx facility reportedly employs more than 500 workers.

Not only do these closures show the overall decline of printed newspapers to electronic alternatives in the U.S., they also are indicative of the decreased demand for commercial web offset printing jobs, which newspaper publishers had long gone after to help fill their idle press times.

[duncan_idaho]

Problems with the newspaper industry:

1) In the 70s and 80s, papers were snapped up by private investing conglomerates because they were seen as stable pieces of portfolios

2) the internet broke the revenue models. The money in the industry was NEVER in subscriptions. It was in the advertisements. The internet introduced alternative innovations that stripped the classifieds of power (job boards, job sites, Craig’s list, Angie’s list, Google searches, private company wevsites) etc. companies tried to compensate by making content online free and selling internet ads, but it never paid at the same rates or worked at the same level.

3) as profit margins dropped, (1) reared its ugly head. Those corporate investors began pressuring the papers to find ways to meet profit margins. This led to huge slashes to copy desk, section editors, and design and layout people.

4) as staff levels dropped, more and more work fell either on the reporters or on anonymous central office editorial and layout types. This has a DRASTIC effect on the quality of the reporting product. No copy editors around to strip opinion out of stories and challenge reporters. Fewer experienced section chiefs to provide context that reporters might not be aware of or not thinking about.

And these factors have just continued to cycle and spiral to reduce the quality of the product.

Luckily for me, when I was 25, a good mentor 30 years my senior advised me to shift careers entirely when I came to a fork in the road. I did. He changed my life drastically for the better. I thank Ray mentally just about every day for the life I have... his ability to see the writing on the wall and lay it out for a cocky young hotshot was the best thing that happened to me professionally.

(Yes, I know. It’s hard to believe I was at one time cockier and more arrogant, but it is true)

[|Zach|]

Chiefs Planet folks are old as hell.

[|Zach|]

Originally Posted by displacedinMN

The iconic glass and copper glass building stretching two blocks that houses the Kansas City Star newspaper — which opened to much fanfare in 2006 as part of a $200 million investment, complete with the installation of brand-new web offset printing presses — has been sold. According to an article in the paper, printing of the newspaper will be outsourced to the Des Moines Register Star, a Gannett paper, effective the first quarter of 2021.

As a result, the Star reported that 68 full-time and 56 part-time production workers will lose their jobs. The presses in Kansas City had also printed local and national editions of several newspapers, including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and others.

Founded in 1880 and formerly owned by the Knight Ridder chain, the Star was acquired by the McClatchy Co. in 2006. McClatchy — which owns 30 newspapers, including The Miami Herald — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February. McClatchy was then purchased by hedge fund Chatham Asset Management in September for $312 million, the Star article indicated.

This latest newspaper printing shutdown and outsourcing agreement follows similar consolidation moves across the company that I reported on recently. These include the impending closure of the 674,000-sq.-ft. Philadelphia Inquirer printing plant, with nine press lines, located just outside of Philadelphia, which prints The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, impacting more than 500 production workers. Those daily papers will be outsourced to another Gannett facility located in nearby Cherry Hill, N.J.

Similarly, News Corp plans to shift the production of print editions of The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and the New York Post to The New York Times’ College Point plant in Queens, N.Y., which also already prints Newsday, a daily newspaper serving Long Island. The relocation to the Queens operation by early next year will result in the closure of News Corp's 400,000-sq.-ft. printing facility in the Bronx, where the publications have been printed since 2001. The Bronx facility reportedly employs more than 500 workers.

Not only do these closures show the overall decline of printed newspapers to electronic alternatives in the U.S., they also are indicative of the decreased demand for commercial web offset printing jobs, which newspaper publishers had long gone after to help fill their idle press times.

It is going to be interesting to see what happens with that building. Seems like the owner wants to get creative with it. Could be all kinds of good stuff that moves in.

[neech]

Originally Posted by |Zach|

It is going to be interesting to see what happens with that building. Seems like the owner wants to get creative with it. Could be all kinds of good stuff that moves in.

The building is for sale or lease I don’t think the owner is going to have much say in what it’s used for.

[gblowfish]

The land is more valuable than the building. Wouldn't surprise me if they went it and blew it up and build something new from the ground up.

[burt]

Originally Posted by gblowfish

The land is more valuable than the building. Wouldn't surprise me if they went it and blew it up and build something new from the ground up.

That would be a shame. Cool building.

[srvy]

Originally Posted by gblowfish

The land is more valuable than the building. Wouldn't surprise me if they went it and blew it up and build something new from the ground up.

yeah, that building will be a pain in the ass to convert to office space. It was built to house printing presses. I could easily see them tearing it down and building to suit.

[Flying High D]

Originally Posted by displacedinMN

Job boards too. No one looks for jobs i I've got too much shit on my plate. n the paper anymore. I remember looking for teaching positions in the Dominance Sadomasochism Masochistic paper every sunday. That was big.

Sounds neat, thanks for sharing.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Pitt Gorilla

It still seems odd to me that it SAVES money to truck the papers in daily.

The Gannett press in Des Moines is a multi-million dollar investment. It costs a small fortune just to maintain. They print dozens of papers, including I believe USA Today. It's a big money maker. There's other print companies that do the same thing.