In Arizona, newspaper readers haven't taken kindly to the shrinking of the local big daily. As Phoenix New Times (h/t Romenesko) recounts:
On Monday, March 19, Arizona Republic subscribers across the Valley picked their newspapers up off the driveway, slid off the protective plastic bag, and then, surely, started shaking the paper — looking for its missing sections.
There was no Valley & State. No Business section. As a reader in Peoria would later complain in a letter to the editor, there wasn't really anything to pass across the breakfast table. The local news had been shoehorned into the first section, along with business. And while there was, indeed, still a sports section and a features section, now called Simple Arizona Living, the guts of the paper were gone.
In their place was a letter from the Republic's editor, Ward Bushee.
"Today, we introduce a new kind of Monday newspaper designed for busy people on the busiest day of the week," he wrote. The front section of the paper had been "reported, edited and designed for time-efficiency and looking ahead to the week."
The missing sections, as it turns out, had been inspired by the best market research money can buy: focus groups, surveys, and direction from a whopping 1,100 readers.
. . . .
People hated it.
Reporters say they were swamped with angry calls from sources and friends. (Even the mailbag write-up admitted to an "ouch!") Regular readers seemed especially insulted that the Republic was claiming they wanted the changes. The changes, they argued, had been clearly designed to save the newspaper money.
For the first time in years, people were actually talking about the Republic. Too bad for the newspaper that it wasn't exactly . . . positive.
Two months later, people are still complaining. One lifelong Republic reader — whose hobby lately has been tracking the paper's ever-shrinking editorial section — is, well, hurt.
It's one thing for the Republic's owners to try out different experiments, he says. But to pretend this is what people in Phoenix really want? "What, do they think we're boobs?"
This man, a business leader, used to admonish his employees by saying, "Don't do anything you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the Valley & State section." But now, on Mondays, there is no Valley & State section.
The thing is, the "Simple Monday" Republic is clearly here to stay. And it's not even the biggest change at the paper these days. To see that change, you don't need to drop 50 cents into the paper box.
Instead, just log on to www.azcentral.com and glance at a few headlines. Then, come back a few hours later.
Do it often enough, and you can read all of tomorrow's newspaper.