Decatur Daily comes to town, T.Wayne not getting on a plane

When we first reported a couple of weeks ago The Decatur Daily was in talks to buy The Times Daily, my first thought was, is it making a profit? Of course, cutting the four senior-most positions must be a large cost saving measure. In all likelihood, more cuts will be necessary. Last I heard, there were over 100 employees at TD. And we are all aware of the plummeting ad sales in print media, hundreds of papers across the nation are going out or under, as we speak.

From media accounts of the transaction, the new owners seem very focused on local news. So I can't see many more cuts in the newsroom. But you better believe they are going to want a return on their multi-million dollar investment. Financial analysts recently estimated the New York Times Regional News Group value to be around $100 million. With the Boston paper accounting for most of that, that leaves just a few million dollar value on the rest of the newsgroups papers, five to ten million a piece. Rest assured, the new owners have close to this invested in the Times Daily.

The new owners have mentioned the high dollar presses at the TD. This will save money on print cost for the Decatur paper.

We at Shoals Insider extend our welcome the new owners and new staff to the Shoals area.

We really hate to see T. Wayne Mitchell leave the TD. I have to admit, I have read several of T. Wayne's columns. I once asked him if T. Wayne was yankee for Dewayne. We both laughed.
In his last column, Mitchell seemed to imply he is sticking around. He can always come work for the Shoals Insider. The check would be the same minus a few zeros.

Times Daily not immune to economic woes

It's no secret the print newspaper business is sinking and sinking fast. One only has to read the national headlines to see newspapers across the country are going out of business by the bushel.

The Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Baltimore Sun, have all filed for bankruptcy protection this past month. The New York Times, parent company of the Times Daily, has had to mortgage its' building to stay afloat. Millions of people are going to the internet, instead of print, to get their news. Why buy the cow when the milk is free?

The Times Daily's financial woes have been well hid from its' readers. The first sign came a couple of weeks ago when T. Wayne Mitchell, Executive Editor, mentioned in his weekly column that the Editorial Page Editor, Robert Palmer, is retiring. Palmer is not the only one. Gary Messner, Operations Director is retiring too. According to folks in the know at the Times Daily, the brass have been offering retirement packages to employees for quite some time. Palmer is not at retirement age. Messner is.

A couple of months ago the Times Daily started to farm out the PrePress department. The PrePress department builds ads and lays out the newspaper, creates graphics, etc.. The department went from seven to one employee. From what we gather, Tuscaloosa will do some of the work.

One of our writers contacted Wayne Mitchell about the PrePress jobs. He said "What is the Shoals Insider? No comment."

Our boss has several friends at the Times Daily. We wish them all the best.

Some people at the TD have told us they foresee a day when they will be online only with a weekly condensed version.

We hear a lot of complaints about the TD. I'm sure they hear some about us, but, it would be hard to imagine the Shoals without a daily newspaper.