Who Wants a Newspaper?

I think it would be fun to run a newspaper...

I ran a newspaper in high school ... think I could do it again!

As much as I love all things digital, I do think there's a place and value in a printed local paper. That's a lovely part of Vermont, too. And it's not all that Internet ready, either; access depends on location.

I hope someone wins and can make it work.

Years ago, I wanted to own and run a local newspaper, but one thing and one thing only turned me off the idea—ad sales. Small weeklies live and die by those. I hope whoever wins is prepared to take that on since it appears the current owner has been handling that as well as the switchboard, even though it isn't mentioned:

He switches lines for a moment to answer another call, joking, when he gets back, that he's also the switchboard operator. The Gazette has one full-time person in production, two people in part-time production, a reporter who recently went part-time, several other correspondents and a courier who picks up the paper at the printer each week in New Hampshire.

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Ad sales are cruicial for local papers.

I spent a year, years back, working in United Newspapers' classified ad department. United Newspapers ran lots of the UK's better local papers and probably still does. It was hard work, and relentless: there was always another edition coming out, and ads to sell. If running a paper were just about finding stories and producing the thing it would be easy. But so long as those ads fund it (the cover price contributes only a tiny percentage of the costs) you need really good sales people on board.

I worked for 11 newspapers, one of them twice and also for the world's largest news gathering organization. You would be surprised at how much money very small newspapers make. They are a semi-monopoly. The Big Boys are not going to run an in-depth article about the local football/baseball team with lots of photographs on a regular basis, but the little ones will. The biggies won't write about that vexing pothole in your street or what happens at City Hall. A great number of small newspapers are privately owned so they don't report their earnings or lack of same four times a year. Nobody knows how much they are making. And the Internet is impossible for local businesses. If I Gooooooogle a roofer I get a hundred firms, some from 200 miles away. (Internet greed, let's throw everything in the pot). Not smart to believe all the urban myths that come down the pike. I happen to know from bitter experience that a lot of newspapers have died due mostly to inept management.
A slum lord who bought a major West Coast newspaper fired all the big editors and put his buddies in charge. The problem was that his buddies were from TV and didn't know a newspaper from a moose. This formerly first class newspaper is now worthless. The Internet nudged it along to its virtual demise but it was idiot management that pulled the trigger.
P.S .newspapers are coming back. People will buy the information they want but it's like the $70 billion a year Cable TV racket. Nobody intelligent wants to pay for 500 channels of facial makeup sales, Bible thumpers, ten commercials in a row, really trashy un-reality shows and vapid sitcoms and breathless news shows that live by the tv "News" motto -- "if it bleeds, it leads." Smaart doods and doodesses are finding ways to et conumers buy one news story or the whole edition of the newspaper.

I forgot to mention that the government give handouts to small newspapers. If you want to build a new housing tract in Anywhere USA you have to file environmental documents so all citizens can get a chance to look them over. It would make sense for those documents to be published on the city or county's blog or website. But no. The documents have to be published in a local newspaper that has been in business ten years ad they must be published four weeks in a row. A nice deal for certain small newspapers. The law was put into effect many, many years ago when newspapers had clout. All kinds of legal documents go in the "legal notices" such as announcements of lawsuits. The small papers get the bucks and larger ones keep a small paper alive to mostly publish this stuff. nice racket. I don't spill any tears for small newspapers. I just might start one myself and get on the gravy train.

noirdood said:

I worked for 11 newspapers, one of them twice and also for the world's largest news gathering organization. You would be surprised at how much money very small newspapers make. They are a semi-monopoly. The Big Boys are not going to run an in-depth article about the local football/baseball team with lots of photographs on a regular basis, but the little ones will. The biggies won't write about that vexing pothole in your street or what happens at City Hall.

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It's true that the bigger publications rarely cover local stories like those you describe: but running such stories does not generate much in the way of income. It's ad sales which earn the money, not editorials.

A great number of small newspapers are privately owned so they don't report their earnings or lack of same four times a year. Nobody knows how much they are making. And the Internet is impossible for local businesses. If I Gooooooogle a roofer I get a hundred firms, some from 200 miles away. (Internet greed, let's throw everything in the pot). Not smart to believe all the urban myths that come down the pike. I happen to know from bitter experience that a lot of newspapers have died due mostly to inept management.

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A lot of newspapers here in the UK are struggling because fewer and fewer people are buying them. Why pay for a paper when you can get your news online for free? And as those sales fall, the ad revenue falls too because it's tied to circulation figures.

P.S .newspapers are coming back. People will buy the information they want but it's like the $70 billion a year Cable TV racket. Nobody intelligent wants to pay for 500 channels of facial makeup sales, Bible thumpers, ten commercials in a row, really trashy un-reality shows and vapid sitcoms and breathless news shows that live by the tv "News" motto -- "if it bleeds, it leads." Smaart doods and doodesses are finding ways to et conumers buy one news story or the whole edition of the newspaper.

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Buying stories one at a time doesn't work with print editions, sadly. Online news is doing much better than print.

noirdood said:

I forgot to mention that the government give handouts to small newspapers. If you want to build a new housing tract in Anywhere USA you have to file environmental documents so all citizens can get a chance to look them over. It would make sense for those documents to be published on the city or county's blog or website. But no. The documents have to be published in a local newspaper that has been in business ten years ad they must be published four weeks in a row. A nice deal for certain small newspapers. The law was put into effect many, many years ago when newspapers had clout. All kinds of legal documents go in the "legal notices" such as announcements of lawsuits. The small papers get the bucks and larger ones keep a small paper alive to mostly publish this stuff. nice racket. I don't spill any tears for small newspapers. I just might start one myself and get on the gravy train.

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Those ads are paid-for by the advertisers. They're not government handouts to small papers, as you state.

If local newspapers were the "gravy train" you think they are, noirdood, don't you think the one which is the focus of this thread would have been snapped up when it was first offered for sale? The owner has not been able to sell it, because the buisness makes so little money. I wish the reality were more like the scenario you describe, but it really isn't so.

LOL @ government handouts and small newspapers on a gravy train. I spent 15 years working in various capacities for a small newspaper, including doing ad sales. There are no handouts from anywhere. Eating handfuls of Tums because you don't know if you'll be able to make payroll for your whole two and a half employees, yes. Handouts, no. Absurd.

noirdood said:

I forgot to mention that the government give handouts to small newspapers.

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Not hardly. You're talking about advertising for public record or legal ads. And it doesn't generate a lot of income. Especially since very little gets advertised unless the newspaper is the county's paper of record, which many small papers are not. Even then, the rate for these ads isn't very high, they aren't display ads and don't take up a lot of space. Besides, environmental documents aren't advertised. Just the notice of the meeting to review them. The only money that most of these papers make off these ads is from the annual tax roll publications.

It really should be a warning sign that the paper has been unable to find a buyer and that's what it's doing the contest. Though feel free to start a small paper.

Jeff

Carrie in PA said:

LOL @ government handouts and small newspapers on a gravy train. I spent 15 years working in various capacities for a small newspaper, including doing ad sales. There are no handouts from anywhere. Eating handfuls of Tums because you don't know if you'll be able to make payroll for your whole two and a half employees, yes. Handouts, no. Absurd.

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That's the reality as I remember it as a reporter and later the editor of a weekly newspaper. On Fridays, when the paychecks were distributed, at the lunch hour there was always a drag race to see who could get to the bank first because if you waited until after work you might find your check wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.

If you gave me a million dollars to start a newspaper, I don't know if I would. There is definitely a need for local news and a focus on what's happening in your neighborhood. The idea is not to compete with the NY Times, but to tell the stories they never will.

However, I don't see much interest from Millenials about newspapers when they get their information off their phones and there aren't enough Boomers to pick up the slack. Whatever the future of newspapers is, it's not necessarily bright.

I hope newspapers stick around. They serve important purposes.

Plus, you can read them even after your phone is dead.

nighttimer said:

However, I don't see much interest from Millenials about newspapers when they get their information off their phones and there aren't enough Boomers to pick up the slack. Whatever the future of newspapers is, it's not necessarily bright.

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I think printed anything is shifting into more of a "prestige item", in the way that vinyl records are. (Prestige isn't the right word, but I can't think of a better one at the mo). People will pay for nice books, records, etc, but more disposable things (when I say news is disposable I mean that because it gets out of date so fast) don't really suit print anymore.

In Australia, basically all the local papers are owned by either Rupert Murdoch or Fairfax (the main competitor). Journalists have been cut hugely and most content is shared across dozens of papers (and indeed, one editor may look after 4 papers). The local rags have basically become entirely based on real estate ads and maybe 10% news (even then, it's mostly rejigged PR releases).

As an interesting counter point, a new newspaper called The Saturday Paper opened up in Melbourne a few years ago. It's whole deal is it resists the manic 24-hour news cycle, and publishes long-form (+1000 words) national news articles every Saturday. And yes, it is printed. When I worked in PR I met the editor, and he wisely explained one of the reasons they were doing well was because they didn't have "legacy audiences". A lot of newspapers have confused identities these days, because their heyday was +30 years ago, and these days their audience doesn't necessarily exist (eg it seems most of the left leaning blue collar workers are all retired). It makes me think a printed newspaper can exist, but not in the old business model of churning out news that you can find a dozen places for free and relying on ad sales.

Sorry everyone. I've gone and rambled on again.

I love newspapers and almost always buy them when I'm traveling. So much fun.

If this was only an essay contest, I think I'd enter. At $175, I'll pass. Since the proprietor is asking for at least 700 entries before the contest goes forward, I doubt we'll actually see enough participants to actually bring this whole thing to a close. Still, it's a clever way to promote that the business is for sale.

RightHoJeeves said:

I think printed anything is shifting into more of a "prestige item", in the way that vinyl records are. (Prestige isn't the right word, but I can't think of a better one at the mo). People will pay for nice books, records, etc, but more disposable things (when I say news is disposable I mean that because it gets out of date so fast) don't really suit print anymore.

In Australia, basically all the local papers are owned by either Rupert Murdoch or Fairfax (the main competitor). Journalists have been cut hugely and most content is shared across dozens of papers (and indeed, one editor may look after 4 papers). The local rags have basically become entirely based on real estate ads and maybe 10% news (even then, it's mostly rejigged PR releases).

As an interesting counter point, a new newspaper called The Saturday Paper opened up in Melbourne a few years ago. It's whole deal is it resists the manic 24-hour news cycle, and publishes long-form (+1000 words) national news articles every Saturday. And yes, it is printed. When I worked in PR I met the editor, and he wisely explained one of the reasons they were doing well was because they didn't have "legacy audiences". A lot of newspapers have confused identities these days, because their heyday was +30 years ago, and these days their audience doesn't necessarily exist (eg it seems most of the left leaning blue collar workers are all retired). It makes me think a printed newspaper can exist, but not in the old business model of churning out news that you can find a dozen places for free and relying on ad sales.

Sorry everyone. I've gone and rambled on again.

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Interesting. Maybe a print 'newspaper' that offered detailed stories / interviews on say a community of 10,000 or so might work. One that specifically excluded national news, unless it had a strong local link, or else was referenced during an interview (We had our Trump, he was called McCarthy," sort of thing.

All depends on the cost of course. (I don't know why Annie Proulx's The Shipping News is popping into my head - might be confusing it with Northern Exposure.)

I doubt he will reach the 700-entry goal. Maybe if his eccentric idea reaches a wide enough audience, he might have a chance. It's one of those moves that makes you look like a genius if it works and a goof if it doesn't.

I hope it works out for him; owning a weekly newspaper is no picnic, especially nowadays. I own one, so I should know. It's stressful and never seems to end. One paper gets done and the next begins. You're always looking for feature stories. Vacations and holidays are not paid and there are no benefits. In a small town like mine, you do all the work yourself as hiring a staff isn't remotely feasible.

It's also a dying industry, since more and more people are turning to Facebook for the news. Circulation numbers have been steadily dwindling for years, at least in the midwest, but probably everywhere. And in my state, legislation comes up every single year that threatens to move public notices from newspapers to the internet. When they finally do get it passed, which will happen eventually as each new generation further embraces technology, it will financially torpedo a lot of newspapers, mine included.