Raleigh readers upset with second cut of stock listings

Dan Barkin, the deputy managing editor of The News & Observer in Raleigh, noted on the Editor’s Blog that he spent a lof of time this past weekend talking to subscribers who were upset that the paper cut its Saturday stock listings.

Barkin wrote, “I talked with a number of readers today who were unhappy about our decision to reduce the stock listings in the Saturday paper. When we reduced our stock tables last Spring, we kept a more comprehensive set of listings on Saturday. Our need to reduce costs forced us to make some difficult choices, and one of the choices was to tighten up our news space. That led us to the hard decision that we had to implement Saturday.

“Our rationale is the same: We’d rather preserve space for local news, including local business news, and stock quotes are readily accessible on the internet. But that doesn’t sit well with folks who either don’t have internet access, or who like the convenience of the newspaper. I just got off the phone with Charlie Sammons, a subscriber since 1971, who told me he tossed his watch and his computer in the dumpster when he retired from the railroad.

“He was disappointed in our decision, as was Henry Schafranski, a retired Gannett pre-press manager who moved down to New Bern from New York. John Otto, a retired Westinghouse employee, let me know he had a ‘bone to pick with us.’

“Like I said, these are not pleasant decisions — we’ve aggravated a number of readers with our recent decision to trim some pages from Channels. I still think we put out a pretty good paper, and I’d rather that we focus our resources on what we can do best.”

Read more here. Barkin is the paper’s former business editor, and truly one of the nice guys in journalism. Like me, he gets all excited about reading a good SEC filing.