Monday, November 19, 2012

Only Old White Males read the paper

My favorite editor and I, yucking it up.

Old, male, and white. 

That’s how Daily Times editor, Phil Heron, describes the demographic of a newspaper reader. He is joined in that belief by the experts who study these things. 

Did you read his piece in today’s paper? Did it make you feel some kinda way?

Chester, with it’s over 90% black population, buys the Daily Times like they’re addicted to the paper (and they probably are). 

It doesn’t matter if we claim to hate the crime stories; or if they don’t present enough good news from Chester; or that they save our high school basketball coverage for the playoffs; or you feel the paper has nothing in it to read; or they keep raising the price. Chester will still buy their Daily Times.

Chester has traditionally been one of the top three zip codes that buys the paper daily; the only town in the county that sells the paper on the streets; and probably the city with the fewest number of subscribers by percentage of population  (which means that we pay more for our paper than most other people).

Mr. Heron comes to his ‘Old, male, and white’ conclusion by...

Judging by the phone calls I get here every day, I can identify our loyal print customers as people who have read us every day for years.
They all make a point of telling me how much they love the newspaper, how their day would not be complete without it, and how much they fear it might go away someday.

That tells me that Chester folks don’t call the editor. We talk among ourselves but we don’t let Mr. Big  know how we feel about the paper we pay him to produce everyday. 

Everyone at the Daily Times knows that if Chester stopped buying the Daily Times for a week, they’d be so scared that the CEO of the Journal Register  would come to Chester and buy everyone a cheese steak and a Pepsi if they’d get back to buying the paper. 

I know for a fact that black folks are reading the Daily Times in Chester and the Daily News in Philly. Maybe if we’d pick up the phone and call the editors, they’d pay us a little more attention. 

Or, leave him a comment here. He'll certainly be looking for your input.



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2 comments:

  1. Phil has got it right. The rest of us less old school go online to read.

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  2. In my huge circle of friends, we have stopped buying the Daily Times because of the paper being bias and only print the negative things that happen in Chester. When I spoke to a journalist, he said that is what sells papers... Point Blank! Well, in light of that conversation, I decided that I would not partake in the expansion of a new Daily Times building or continue to contribute to the Editor in Chief's new beach or summer home.

    I hope Phils reads this!!!!!

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