Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Asheville Citizen-Times Publisher Dave Neill in a column on Sunday announced the newspaper would begin delivering more local and national news starting Feb. 9 in its print and online editions. Neill said the Citizen-Times would alos be rolling out new smart phone and tablet apps in coming months.
The plan is to fold about a dozen pages of content from USA Today into the Asheville Citizen-Times. It’s a company-wide plan by the newspaper’s corporate owner, Gannett, which the New York Times detailed in December.
Neill said the changes are a necessary evolution for the newspaper.
Newspapers need to evolve or die. There is a generational shift in media preferences, for sure, but a strong newspaper is still critical — especially for the vast legions of baby boomers in Western North Carolina. That’s why we’re introducing new features in the paper over the next couple months. That’s why we’re committed to going in-depth to add more watchdog and investigative work. And that’s why we’re going to introduce more local and national news into the paper and e-newspaper starting Feb. 9. We will add more local news and, in partnership with USA TODAY, we will add more national, sports and lifestyle news. All told, more than 70 pages a week will be added to the Citizen-Times.
Neill is promising more content even as Gannett, and the Citizen-Times, continues to shed employees. Still, the newspaper recently filled a critical job that had been empty for a couple of years – the role of editor. Josh Awtry recently started in that role. We’ll see how this develops.
Thanks Sean, worked like a charm.
Less staff, more news. Can’t wait to see how that works.
I hope he’s not counting the “Raleigh Digest” in that ‘more news’ category.
Counting on “USeless-A Today” for national propaganda is bad enough.
A moot point given the greedy paywall. A pity, as I missed counting all of the daily grammatical errors.
It’s extremely easy to circumvent the paywall since Gannett still wants to be noticed by the all-powerful Google. In Chrome you can you the ‘Forget Me’ extension (https://www.google.com/search?q=forget+me+chrome+extension&oq=forget+me+chrome&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l4.10874j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8) or just use Incognito.
For other browsers simply find an extension that erases site-specific cookies.
Is circumventing the pay wall a form of stealing, like paying for one copy from the news box but taking enough copies to give to your friends?
Is using a feature that comes bundled with my browser, Incognito, to access the internet theft?
To stick with your analogy, it’s more akin to reading above the fold on the front page and then reading the rest with x-ray vision. Would that be theft?
Not theft, if you have x-ray vision.
Not supported on my android phone. I just copy and paste the headline I want to read into google. Click on the article link and read. It’s not theft, I still see and click on the ads on there website.
Let me see if I can catch you up to everything you missed in the paywall days… American Idol updates, national weather disasters, someone won an award, someone else is upset at the government.
There you go, you can send me $5 through PayPal.
Seriously though, I keep seeing folks from the paper at local grocery stores trying to give the daily away, and I swear people avoid eye contact like the drunk uncle at a wedding. The C-T died long ago.