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Matt Paxton
There’s a lot being written about newspapers closing and news deserts, where there are no sources of local news. It’s definitely happening but there are places where local newspapers are hanging in, if not exactly thriving. Community papers that are surviving tend to be locally owned or in small groups of 5-10 newspapers with the owner active in daily operations.
Few papers I know of are able to exist solely relying on print advertising anymore. They are going to other sources of revenue to supplement the remaining advertising dollars, and there is quite a diversity in how they are going about it.
A friend publishes a newspaper in a very rural, sparsely populated county in western Virginia where ad dollars have been scarce for decades. She and her small staff put out a great paper every week – winning numerous awards. A majority of the people in the county subscribe to the paper. She decided several years ago, with a lot of input from subscribers, that the paper was worth a lot more to readers than the then-current subscription rate. She explained in several columns and editorials that, to survive, the paper needed to get more revenue from subscriptions. When she raised the annual subscription rate from $50 to $99, she expected a lot of nonrenewals, but was pleasantly surprised when a large majority of subscribers renewed. They believed in the paper and saw the value of it in their daily lives.
Other publishers are finding that people will pay for the news and information they want on-line also. Some charge for access to their websites, which are regularly being updated with news, sports and local advertising. Electronic editions make it possible for long-distance subscribers to see the paper the day it’s published instead of having to wait for mail delivery of the print copy. All of these help to pay for the news staff that write and report that content.
We will be increasing our subscription prices in the next few months ourselves, mainly to offset the increase in postage costs for mailing the paper to subscribers. Those have gone up twice in the past 12 months, and will go up again July 8 – for papers mailed to addresses within Rockbridge an increase 8.8 percent. That’s on top of a roughly 8 percent bump in January. But we do look long-term at subscriptions as another way to help keep the books balanced. We have to.
Some publishers are venturing more into digital advertising sales, beyond the display ads sold on their own websites. They are selling what are called programmatic ads through Google, which are those messages you might see after you search for a particular product online. Once the realm of very sophisticated digital marketing firms, there are now one-stop shop agencies that help traditional media – print and broadcast, compete in this arena, helping their customers diversify and target their marketing, while generating new revenue for the newspaper.
This helps the paper become more valuable as a marketing partner for its customers, opening up this fast-growing area to local businesses, not just the big companies. We’re looking at adding this capability ourselves.
We’ve been somewhat successful leveraging our expertise in writing, design and distribution of targeted or niche printed publications. It’s an area we’re comfortable with, and where we’ve found some local demand. Some of these publications we’re now producing aren’t distributed with the newspaper, or are even local in coverage.
For over a decade, The News-Gazette has partnered with James Madison University to produce an annual guide for the families of matriculating first year students. JMU’s Office of Parent Engagement writes the copy, McClung Companies in Waynesboro designs and prints the magazine, and we sell advertising in it to pay for the production and distribution – and to compensate us. We’ve produced our Visiting Lexington magazine for almost 30 years, which is distributed locally to tourismrelated businesses like hotels and B&Bs, in free pickup boxes and also through the Virginia State Welcome Centers. We produce the chamber of commerce’s annual Community Guide. This year, we started a biannual community magazine in partnership with the Greater Augusta Regional Chamber called This Augusta, which covers events, local businesses, attractions, food, arts and music occurring in the Augusta area.
All of these projects help cover the costs of paying reporters and editors, maintaining websites, printing and distributing newspapers in the face of declining print advertising volumes. You may have seen that Kroger is discontinuing distribution of their grocery circulars in newspaper, including ours, effective the end of May. That’s another revenue loss we’ll have to cover from other sources. And, I might add, a loss to shoppers who rely on those circulars for their weekly grocery shopping, and don’t use smartphones.
We think it’s essential that local communities have a source of local news and information that’s reliable, objective, comprehensive and fair. We think local newspapers should provide residents with a place to express their opinions on public matters. Providing this costs money, and the old display print advertising model isn’t working like it did several decades ago.
Most businesses that have been around for a while have had to reinvent themselves, sometimes multiple times. Community newspapers are no exception, and we’re in the middle of such a reinvention now. We have a great staff that’s dedicated to keeping you, our readers, informed, and working hard for our advertisers to help their businesses thrive. Our people are a constant source of new ideas for our news and advertising teams.
The News-Gazette has been around for a long time. I think we can be around for a long time to come by adapting and by being entrepreneurial and capitalizing on opportunities. I thought you might be interested in how we’re negotiating these turbulent times for our industry.
