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Tribune printing press moving to Fresno

April 1, 2015

Tribune news standCentral Valley residents can soon get copies of the San Luis Obispo Tribune hot off the press. The Tribune announced Tuesday that, starting in early June, its newspaper will be printed in Fresno.

The Tribune’s parent corporation, McClatchy Company, is making the Fresno Bee a regional printing site. The Fresno Bee presses will also print The Cambrian, a weekly that serves San Luis Obispo County’s North Coast.

Tom Cullinan, the president and publisher of the Fresno Bee, said the change will allow The Tribune to be printed on environmentally friendly presses that use water-based ink.

Cullinan is currently The Tribune’s publisher, as well. The Tribune’s previous president and publisher, Bruce Ray, resigned on Feb. 27, shortly after McClatchy announced an initiative dubbed “corporate reorganization.”

Over the past decade, McClatchy’s stock price has plummeted. In 2005, a share of McClatchy stock sold for $74.80. It is now selling for $1.87.

In July 2009, the stock fell to a low of 44 cents. It rose to a recent high of $6.81 in April 2014, after McClatchy installed firewalls to make readers pay for online access.

But, the stock price has been in decline for the past year. Likewise, The Tribune’s online readership has decreased since McClatchy installed the firewalls.

The Tribune cites Cullinan as saying that 15-full time employees and 13 part-time employees will lose work as a result of the change in printing press location.


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The Tribune’s problem is not merely one of being highly skewed when it comes to reporting the news. Its big problem is that overall it has become a crummy news source. Its integrity is long gone — it’s no longer a trusted source of news.


Hideously poor leadership over the past two decades has really done a number on the Tribune. I think in many ways the decline began with the unexpected passing of Editor Jeff Fairbanks. As on-line competition has grown, the Tribune truly has been a day late and a dollar short and it clumsily tries to compete.


What’s really infuriating is the moronic former CEO of McClatchy, Gary Pruitt, jumped ship to the Associated Press after paying $4.5 BILLION to buy Knight Ridder (the Trib’s former parent.)


The Trib was then treated to its own local forms of Mr. Pruitt the moron and it finds itself in the position that it does today.


If the Tribune produced a good product I would be the first to purchase an annual digital subscription (are you listening Mr. Tom Cullinan?)


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Anyone hoping to get late night sports will have to wait an extra day…paper will probably

be printed around 10 p.m. in Fresno in order to be driven here and delivered before

dawn. Most of this paper still isn’t worth wrapping trash in it.

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I say good riddance to this rag….and hope and CCN may someday become a print

media. New Times isn’t much better either. I suppose I’ll still continue to have

delivery problems….at least now it will be blamed on the Fresno printing plant.


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Not really. The paper’s content is transmitted electronically — be it for a few hundred feet or from SLO to Fresno so there’s no change there. The actual printing time will be either the same or perhaps even faster.


That leaves perhaps an added 90 minutes to physically truck the printed papers to SLO. That 90 minutes (and then some) could easily be dealt with through improved scheduling, etc.


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90 minutes doesn’t even get you to Cholame in a truck. It’s another 60 minutes to SLO. Then there’s loading and unloading.


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Yes, it might take 2 hours, but not because it’s a truck. Loading and unloading should be negligible — with the right planning and execution of course.


The 2 hours could easily be made up — I’m sure there’s far more slop than that in the current process.


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For over 40 years I read a daily copy of the LA Times right here in SLO. A daily paper that was first printed in Downtown LA and later the San Fernando Valley and trucked to SLO each day and delivered to my door in the morning on time without a problem.


They might well screw it up anyway, but there’s no logistical reason why McClatchy can’t priest the Trib in Fresno and deliver it each morning in SLOC.


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Interesting part of story in the Tribune’s original breathless announcement is omitted here. Their total circulation, paper and digital, is 29,000. Not long before McClatchy spent billions purchasing this damaged goods, it stood at 40,000 print copies!


That’s amazing decline. So when they claim their going down the sewer is all because of internet competition, don’t believe it.


The real reason is they don’t report local news adequately, and that’s the only reason anybody would want to read a local paper. No news, no readers. Everybody I know who still gets the print paper is over 70, and gets it out of habit rather than affection or interest. Not a bright future for McClatchy’s fluff piece.


As for bragging about the environmental advantages of using soy inks in Fresno, what a hoot. They’ve been doing that for years right here in SLO. All they’re doing is shutting down a printing plant and adding energy in the form of highway miles to their papers. Ask me, this is just a signal that the end of a SLO newspaper is near.


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The old liberal rag fades farther.


We re-started our subscription, but only because

A: News junkies will read anything, even holding our noses over 90% liberal content,

B: Our zany tropical parrot bombs the Trib and it’s 90% liberal content.


Maybe if the stupid paper had coverage and less liberal drivel, less mouthpiece of Marx, circulation would be UP and those local jobs wouldn’t be lost.


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just keep the fox news station turned up loud- you get everything you need right there Lame…and there is Rush… why read at all?


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Anyone who consider Limbaugh to be a news source is indeed “lame.”


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We’re drifting a bit here, from topic of the Trib hauling it’s papers from Fresno when it should just stop the truck, half way here at the Kettleman City toxic waste dump and leave the printed copies there, where they belong anyway, but…


Limbaugh is a commentator. He passes items on from AP, CNN, NPR. I listen directly to all four so I can learn just how pathetically liberal many people are. Raw news I suck in voraciously from lots of sources.


News is where you get it. In north county we can easily hear NPR San Ardo in case we need to wretch up some bad food from the night before. NPR is a trademarked brand of syrup of ipecac. NPR really helps


If you can’t recognize a liberal slant in many articles, writers and LTE Trib writers, you must be reading some other Tribune from the one in SLO. If you think it not, you must have Mao’s little red quote book under your pillows.


Good to know that some of you are as far out in left field as I am in right field.


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Limbaugh is an entertainer…


I’m not sure the toxic waste site would take the Trib — might be a bit too toxic…


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The hate from the left towards El Rushbo is telling….he scares them to death.


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Liberal rag? the Fibune? I guess, LC, that places you to the right of the Teabag twits…


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Brought to you by the Co-Exist Party.


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Yep. Our Tribune news will be older and more fossil fuels will be consumed. 28 jobs in this area go away and traffic slows on Highway 41. Circling the drain indeed. It’s probably worth pointing out that newspapers that ACTUALLY report on the events of the community, perform balanced investigative journalism, and uncover issues are doing extremely well. If you choose, however, to simply cut and paste drivel from any source that will pay you, then you will eventually pay the price. This community deserves better.


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The cut-n-paste is indeed a problem. So is ignoring important local news because it runs contrary to the likes of the Trib’s publisher and editor plus the nonsense stuff that actually does get reported on.


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Propaganda in free fall.


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Will we get the Tribune a day late ? Will it be flown into SLO from Fresno? Or come by truck? Maybe they can hire some drug dealers already making that drive from Fresno to Santa Maria each day.


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The Trombone is already a day late. And a dollar short.


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Don’t worry, plenty of hot air to spare.


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Think of all that CO2 created in driving the paper up to SLO from Fresno daily…ha ha ha …..oh the Irony I love it!


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Circling the drain.


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ha ha ha…..it’s even too expensive to print the damn paper in this town.

Going to Fresno for the jobs Americans won’t do.


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So are you saying the Trib hires illegal’s to print the paper or is this more race bs from white

America?


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Racist….are you smoking Crack?

If you are not intelligent enough to get the joke that a liberal paper (who uses the BS argument about Jobs Americans won’t do) is itself having to move out of town to save costs, then friend, stay off the computer.


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We New Obispans don’t give a shit about your loss of 28 proletariat jobs. We brought our money with us, and don’t new your damn employment.


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… don’t NEED your damn employment …


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