Forget Gannett, Forget McClatchy — Want To Read Positive Stories About The US Newspaper Business Then Concentrate on Community Newspapers – They’re Being Read By 83% of All Americans 18 And Older

Philip M. Stone March 5, 2008

While media stories concentrate on the dismal January performances by daily metropolitan newspapers at such big chains as Gannett and McClatchy, there’s actually a section of the US newspaper industry that is continuing to do very well, thank you very much -- non daily community newspapers.

New research shows those newspapers continue to be read in huge numbers – some 83% of Americans over the age of 18 read a community newspaper each week – and their publishers claim that business is just great.

The National Newspaper Association (NNA) using information gathered by the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism says that in spite of all the doom and gloom results announced each month by metropolitan newspapers that community newspapers are growing circulation and readership.

“There are plenty of community newspapers that are maintaining or growing double-digit profit margins,” said Brian Steffens, NNA executive director, “and many that are also growing circulation and readership... I get more calls about new papers starting up than I get from publishers who are considering shutting down. The pace of community newspapers being bought and sold the past two years indicates a healthy and vibrant community newspaper market.”

That supports the various emails that ftm regularly receives from such folks as community newspaper broker Larry Grimes who get really upset by all the doom and gloom newspaper stories dissecting lost dollar by lost dollar in the newspaper industry when in actual fact, there is a natural divide between what is happening to metropolitan daily newspapers and what is happening at the truly local level.

What sets the community newspaper apart, Grimes say, are publishers who are taking a far greater pro-active approach to their markets. “They continue to increase their household penetration. They are creating special sections, products and on-line resources that reach out to all major segments of their population (that includes the 21-35 demographic.) They are getting to better know their advertiser’s business and are working with them to create marketing campaigns that generate a strong ROI.

That includes reaching out to and working closely with the realtors, auto dealers, and employment advertisers in the market.”

The word that the community newspapers want to get out is that while the “sky is falling” may have some truth at the metropolitans, at the community newspaper level it’s a completely different story. “I’m not immune to some very significant challenges facing the newspaper industry … but part of the problem with reporting on the health and welfare of the newspaper industry is that virtually all of the previous research has been focused on large daily newspapers serving the top 100 markets. There are more than 1,400 daily newspapers and about 8,000 non-daily community newspapers across America. The top 100 do not tell the whole story, but that’s about all we’ve seen reported in the past few years,” Steffens said.

So what is the research that excites the community newspaper people so much? According to the study:

• A slight increase – to 83% from the 81% reported in 2005 – of adults over the age of 18 that read a community newspaper every week.
• The average time spent reading such a newspaper is 41.8 minutes – a near 10% increase over the time recorded in the previous 2005 survey.
• Nearly one-third of readers keep their newspaper for more than six days, enabling them to revisit a story or advertisement at their leisure.”

That last figure is in stark contrast to the experience with free newspapers handed out as commuters travel around town that seem to be tossed away after the first casual read.

And what is it that draws such increased readership, and the increased time reading the product? It’s not rocket-science, it is what ftm has been preaching for years as the way forward for metropolitan newspapers trying to dig themselves out of the malaise they find themselves in today – concentrate on local news coverage..

According to the NNA study, 99% of readers concentrate on local news, 64% of them very often  which is a 15% increase over the previous 2005 study. And when it comes to local government coverage 90% of readers believe it is important for newspapers to hold government, civic and business leaders to a high level of accountability and that 90% of readers said it was important for newspapers to investigate the claims and statements made by government, civic and business leaders.

It’s an important point because there are indications that the public is catching on to the blasé local coverage that their daily newspapers are increasingly giving to local government activities as their newsrooms are decimated. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for instance, nearly all daily newspapers are run by Media News and instead of each overlapping newspaper competing with one another in their daily coverage of local government as they did when they were independently owned, those newspapers have now adopted a news agency type of coverage where one reporter covers a beat for all. Gone is the competitiveness in getting a beat, an exclusive, it’s just a matter of rewriting the news release. That’s not what the public wants and they are turning to their weeklies in ever greater numbers for the real story.

According to the survey 99% of community newspaper readers read local news with the two topics of most interest being government news (94%) and educations news (92% -- how many education beats have been thrown out as metropolitan newspapers reorganize their newsrooms?)

The NNA, of course, is real pleased with the numbers showing how their community newspapers are reinforcing their editorial niche. Metropolitan newspapers should make the NNA report “required reading” – if their newsrooms are being asked to do more with less, then the NNA report is as good a study as any for editors to allocate their remaining local resources.