Community Newspapers

Community newspapers are ultimately going to replace larger publications such as The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. The news consumers are going to continue their interest in local stories at a fraction of the cost of larger publications. Community newspapers, however, need to tackle the issue of funding.

Michael Liedtke, AP business writer of phys.org wrote, “Newspapers are hurting all over the United States, but the pain is less severe at small publications.” “CNN isn’t coming to my town to cover the news. Community newspapers are still a great investment because we provide something you can’t get anywhere else,” said Liedtke. He also noted that the potential for success at community newspapers is increased due to a lack of competition, which is present at the larger publications.

Rebecca Pocklington of the Reading Chronicle said that politicians as far away as the United Kingdom are stressing the importance of community papers. Pocklington mentioned Finance Secretary to the Treasury, Greg Clark, who said, "Local papers are vital to a community, they are almost required for it to function as a community at all.” The Secretary of State for Communities and Government, Eric Pickles, also weighed in on the issue, “Local papers are just as important as national papers and local news provides a voice for the community,” he said.

In class we discussed the current success of community newspapers. Community newspapers are able to get some investors who believe in hyper-localization. Hyper-localization is the idea of publishing extremely local news, such as the scores of little league games. According to Matt Daugherty, publisher of local papers, Kearney Courier, Smithville Herald and Liberty Tribune, communities will always have a vested interest in local news because it features their family members or other acquaintances.

While investors who believe in hyper-localization are present, the current conflict faced by community papers is how to fully fund their operations. Luckily for consumers, these papers can be offered at a lower rate. It is not necessary to pay the local reporters as much to drive ten minutes, as it is for the industry-wide papers that may have to send their reporters overseas or across the country. Christopher Helman of Forbes magazine, said:

It doesn’t take a lot of personnel to put out a monthly, especially when half its content is ads and coupons. Each edition usually has one editor and one reporter, plus a general manager, a couple of account executives and a graphic designer. No big-name columnists, no newspaper union members and no pension funds to worry about. The editorial voice is about as earnest and devoid of irony as you can get in this business.

Community newspapers have another leg up on the larger papers. Matt     Daugherty observed, “The industry shot itself in the head by allowing free online access to their papers.” Some community newspapers never allowed free access to their content and those that did have plans for change. Daugherty allows just fifty percent of his publications to be put online and is currently working on a “pay wall” to further offset expenses.  A “pay wall” allows the audience to access a monthly allotment of stories before they are charged to view more.

Internet cookies currently monitor Daugherty’s “pay wall”. He noted, however, that the system is not yet perfect, “technically readers could clear the cookies in their browsers and potentially be able to read infinite stories.” Each individual computer contains an IP address, but Daugherty has already foreseen the problems of monitoring his readers via IP address. “If I were to monitor by IP address then I would be blocking students at schools if their classmates have already read the paper. People at libraries could be blocked from seeing their grandson’s winning science fair story,” said Daugherty.

When asked if his audience would be offended or apprehensive about a “pay-wall,” Daugherty said he was confident it would not cost him any readers in the long run. “Generally if you communicate the message well of why you need to be charging, it will be received well too.” He allowed that readers could potentially be put-off at first about being charged, but they would eventually come around. “The problem is that people have begun to think that they deserve quality news for free,” said Daugherty.

Matthew Debord of scpr.org wrote, “The verdict on pay-walls seems to be that they're moderately despised but that if your content is good enough, then people will break out the credit cards. They just won't pay enough to save the print side.”

Advertising can be a driving force behind the funding of papers, but the current transition to technology has proved problematic for advertisers. According to The Huffington Post, 2011 marked the first year that news was officially consumed online more so than in paper form, “In December (of 2011), 41 percent of Americans said they got most of their news about national and international issues on the Internet, more than double the 17 percent who said that a year earlier.” The Huffington Post also stated that tablets were “the fastest-growing new digital technology, ahead of cell phones when they were introduced.”

Daugherty noted that all papers have to be prepared to adapt to the medium in which the audience prefers to consume the news, but “online advertising has been proved less successful than print.” He explained that advertisers monitor their success with a statistic known as the “click-through rate.” If an advertiser finds that they have a half percent “click-through rate,” for example, that means that one person has clicked on the ad for every two hundred people that have read the article. A half percent “click-through rate” is considered positive for a community newspaper.

In the most desperate of times, some papers will resort to writing a story about a company in exchange for purchased advertising space. Daugherty said he considered this practice unethical, but was unprepared to judge a company that found themselves in such dire conditions. Communities can only hope for a publisher as honest as Daugherty. Discussing John Garrett, community news publisher in Texas, Christopher Helman wrote:

Garrett doesn’t scruple publishing nice articles about his accounts. Ken Moncebaiz, who operates K&M Steam Cleaning in Austin, bought an ad in the first issue of Impact (Garrett’s publication) and has bought the inside back cover of the paper ever since, shelling out $11,000 a month. He has been rewarded with the occasional story. With ten trucks to keep busy, “I buy advertising for a living,” says Moncebaiz; most of his $33,000-a-month spend goes online to Google Ads and PaperClick. He doesn’t hesitate to call up Garrett when he sees ads for too many competing carpet cleaners in the paper.

While industry-wide publications are struggling to stay in business, community papers continue to thrive. If only the financial aspect could be quickly solved, readers would begin to realize the impact and potential of the local papers.