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Stop the
presses — are newspapers fit to be print?
By Jeffrey Pickette
Citizen Staff
To simplify a
rather complex problem facing print journalism institutions,
papers like the Boston Globe
are suffering as readers continue to flock to the
Internet to get their daily dose of news.
And while
people pay for the print edition, the online version, for the
most part, is free. More people might be reading the
Globe, but
less are paying to do so.
This Internet
dilemma, which has plagued the large dailies, seems to have had
less of an impact on community newspapers like the Canton
Citizen. The Citizen,
for instance,
does not even publish all of the week’s articles and
pictures on its website.
“I think
people will still want to go to Cassie’s and pick up their
Canton Citizen,” said Beth Erickson,
the
Citizen’s publisher and editor-in-chief. “It’s a
tradition for a lot of people and I don’t think they’ll be
easily letting that go.”
Dan Kennedy, a
professor at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism and
the creator of the blog Media Nation, feels that community
newspapers have a “brighter” long-term outlook than their larger
counterparts.
“There really
is no substitute and very little competition for the highly
local news and advertising that community papers provide,”
Kennedy wrote in an e-mail to the
Citizen. “In
the long run, large, national papers like the New York Times and
the Washington Post should be able to survive — even if the
print product disappears — and local papers and websites should
do well.
“The papers
that are truly in the most trouble are ‘in-betweeners’ like the
Globe, the
Philadelphia Inquirer, the Miami Herald, etc.”
Circulation
for the daily print edition of the
Globe has
plummeted from over 380,000 in the fall of 2007 to just over
300,000 according to the most recent figures. But that doesn’t
mean less people are reading the Globe’s content. In March
alone, the paper’s online site, boston.com, had 5.7 million
unique visitors — a 36 percent increase from the previous March.
Nation-wide
online readership in the first quarter of 2009 is up 75 percent
from the first quarter figures gathered in 2004. Meanwhile, the
Globe’s
falling print edition sales mirror the national trend in
journalism as well.
“Newspapers
are not facing a readership crisis,” explained Kennedy. “They’re
facing an advertising crisis, as Craigslist and consolidation in
the retail business are hollowing out the economic basis of the
newspaper business.”
As Eileen
McNamara, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the
Globe and a
journalism professor at Brandeis University, explains, recent
bank mergers and the closing of local department stores like
Jordan Marsh and Filene’s have put a strain on advertising.
Combine the
migration of readers to the web with the losses in advertising
and the current recession, and it’s easier to understand why
newspapers are operating in the red across the country and why
the future of the print edition of the newspaper itself is
suddenly in question.
The
Globe is projected to lose $85 million this year, and
while the paper has staved off threats of closure from its
parent company — the New York Times Co. — by making $20 million
in concessions, its future still remains uncertain.
There is still
the possibility that the
Times will
try to sell the Globe
and cut its losses. In fact, the
Globe
published a story last weekend that said three area businessmen
— Stephen Pagliuca, Jack Connors and Stephen Taylor (of the
Taylor family that once owned the Globe) — “have emerged as
possible buyers.”
The
Globe is far
from the only paper experiencing hardship. The Seattle
Post-Intelligencer and Denver’s Rocky Mountain News both
recently closed. The Hearst Corporation threatened to close the
San Francisco Chronicle. The Tribune Company, which publishes
the Hartford Currant, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago
Tribune among others, filed for bankruptcy protection, as has
the Philadelphia Newspapers group, which most notably publishes
the Philadelphia Inquirer.
One side
effect from this crisis in print journalism is that thousands of
journalists are being laid off or are accepting buyout packages.
As a result, there are fewer reporters available to cover daily
happenings, city hall meetings, breaking news stories, etc.
“[Former
Speaker of the House] Tip O’Neill used to say that ‘all politics
is local;’ well all news is local,” McNamara said. “What happens
in Washington is important on the domestic front largely in how
it translates into your own community. So, they set some sort of
education policy there — you better know how it translates here.
You’re not going to know that if you don’t have people who are
going out and finding out for you.”
But with much
of the discussion focused on how large papers are adjusting,
little is written about how small community papers are holding
up.
The publishers
of the Citizen
and the Milton Times, both of which are independently owned,
said there has been a slight decrease in advertising, but
nothing to the extent of what papers like the
Globe are
facing.
Local papers
have the type of advertising — ads for little league
registration or for small businesses, for example — that are
town-specific and therefore would not need to be placed in a
paper that reaches multiple communities.
“I see a
change — a slight reflection of the economy — in advertising
revenue,” Erickson said. “But I don’t see any change in our
subscribers, which is what I think you have to worry about.
Where you can attribute a decline in advertising revenue to the
economy — which will turn around — if you’re losing subscribers,
you have to ask yourself, ‘Why?’”
The
Citizen has a
weekly circulation of nearly 3,500 and Erickson said the paper
is on its typical pace to pick up anywhere from 50 to 100 new
subscribers this year.
Erickson and
Milton Times publisher Pat Desmond attribute their respective
papers’ success to remaining hyper-local.
“Part of our
success over the years is that the paper itself is a reflection
of this community as much as anything else,” Erickson said.
“It’s what the people want to see, what they want to read.”
“The reason
that the Milton Times focuses on Milton is that this is a
business model that does work,” Desmond added. “If you really
focus on one community and do it well, you’ll find support.”
Some local
papers are still feeling the pinch though. GateHouse Media New
England, a newspaper chain that owns over 100 dailies and
weeklies in the region including the Brockton Enterprise, the
Patriot Ledger and the Canton Journal, recently instituted a
temporary pay reduction for its employees for the remainder of
the year.
The pay cut
will range from 7 to 15 percent depending on the employee’s
salary. GateHouse already cut its work force by 10.5 percent
since the beginning of the year, according to an article in the
Ledger.
While Kennedy
said that there “is no substitute for local ownership,” and the
benefits of conglomerate ownership were primarily economic, he
still felt chain-owned newspapers could still “do a good job.”
It seems that
for the most part, community newspapers are set to survive the
recession, particularly the independently owned ones. The fate
of the larger metro dailies like the
Globe remains
to be seen, however.
Whether these
papers continue to publish a print edition or move to an
online-only format, it is clear that the current newspaper
business model is no longer feasible for long-term
sustainability.
“I think we’re
too fixated on the paper — the physical newsprint — that’s not
what I’m worried about,” McNamara said. “I don’t think there is
a threat to the American democracy if newsprint disappears.
There is if journalism disappears. So we’ve got to keep our eye
on what matters and what matters is finding a model that will
fund thoughtful, impartial reporters to go out and gather
information.”
“It helps the
rest of us make informed decisions about the world we live in,”
she continued. “That’s what has to survive.”
June 18, 2009
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