July 16, 2007

St. Louis Weekly Shopper aka The Post-Dispatch

Apparently the owners are having a hard time selling their product, so the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is giving money away in effort to make people read their publication.

I got a piece of junk mail today from the Post outlining the rules to it's "Millionaire Money" game. And all I have to do to get some of this hot cash is buy the paper and then wait for them to let me know if I won.

I don't think so. Maybe if the newspaper focused on better local news and sports coverage it might be able to boost it's readership. But, the paper's management apparently doesn't realize it's readers are smarter than they know. As I've written before if the paper wants to improve it needs to start by cleaning house in it's sports department.

Then it needs to start being independent of it's biggest advertisers and do some journalism where the management is willing to back up it's reporters. Maybe then it can stem the loss of readership that has been occurring for years. Sure, the Internet and national media are competitors, but the loss of readership in this market is at a higher rate than other markets around the country. Wake up Post-Dispatch. If you really are a part of the community, as you would have people believe, then it's time to get back to the basics.

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