In my last post, examining the state of local newspapers, Mike Waller, a former editor of The Kansas City Star, commented on the high quality of a privately owned paper in the state where he now lives, South Carolina.
The paper he spoke of was The Post and Courier in Charleston, SC.
That got me wondering if the remaining big-city newspapers that are family owned are faring better, in terms of circulation, than the papers owned by the three largest newspaper chains — Gannett, McClatchy and Tronc (formerly Tribune Publishing), which are publicly owned.
So, I did a little comparing, based on statistics assembled by the Alliance for Audited Media, an industry-financed trade organization. But before comparing the Sunday circulation statistics at some big-chain and family-owned papers, a little background…
Like many major dailies, The Star was locally owned for much of its history. In fact, it was employee owned for decades, until an up-and-coming media company named Capital Cities Inc. bought it in 1977. Since then, The Star has changed hands three more times, first going to Walt Disney Co., then to KnightRidder and finally to McClatchy in 2006 (which, somewhat coincidentally, is the year I retired).
Over the last several decades, most family-owned papers sold out to one or the other of the big chains, and I would daresay that a significant percentage of employees at those big chains is very unhappy. I can guarantee you that if a private buyer came along and bought almost any one of the chain-owned papers, the employees would be running around hysterically, whooping with joy. (At The Star, they would be doing cartwheels.)
A handful or more of modest- to good-sized papers have managed to hang on and remain in the “family-owned” category. Here are several examples Mike Waller and I came up with:
:: Arkansas Democrat Gazette, based in Little Rock, and owned by Walter E. Hussman Jr.
:: The Post and Courier in Charleston, SC, owned by the Manigault family.
:: The Seattle Times, a majority of which is owned by the Blethen family.
:: The Register-Guard in Eugene, OR, owned by the Baker family.
:: The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, WA, owned by the Cowles family, which is distantly related to the Cowles family that formerly owned The Des Moines Register.
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As I said in my earlier post, Sunday print circulation at The Star, owned by McClatchy, dropped a stunning 26 percent between September 2016 and September 2017. A spot check of a leading paper at each of the other two chains, the Los Angeles Times (Tronc) and the Louisville Courier-Journal (Gannett), showed significant losses but not as hefty as those at The Star.
The Los Angeles Times’ Sunday circulation dropped 15.3 percent between 2016 and 2017, and The Courier-Journal’s fell 10 percent.
Now, let’s look at the Sunday losses for the five family-owned papers mentioned above:
— Arkansas Democrat Gazette: Minus 10 percent
— The Post and Courier: Minus 8.8 percent
— The Seattle Times: Minus 6 percent
— The Register-Guard: Minus 5 percent
— The Spokesman-Review: Minus 2.4 percent
Four of those five lost a smaller percentage of subscribers than their big-chain counterparts.
In an email, I asked Waller if the difference might be that residents of cities with family-owned papers felt a deeper loyalty to their hometown papers than residents in cities with large-chain ownership.
Here’s how he answered:
“The difference is that these papers…have had to make cuts, but did it much more carefully than Tribune, McClatchy and other big chains. The family papers tried to limit the damage; the others simply butchered their papers for short-term profits. In doing so, I believe they have effectively killed their papers, because none of them are making much money in the digital world and seem unlikely to do so in the future.
“Unless a miracle business model surfaces somewhere, many of those big-city, chain-owned papers will be dead in 15 to 20 years. Most of the smaller dailies (with circulations of 10,000 to 40,000) will survive because they have a monopoly on local news and information…and not that much competition from broadcasting and even from the internet. They have already absorbed the loss of classified to the Internet and still are making reasonable margins.”
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Mike Waller
In my last post, I quoted Warren Buffett, “The Oracle of Omaha,” as saying much the same thing about the difficulty many major metropolitan dailies have had transitioning from print to the Internet. Equally as credible is Waller, whose career also included stints as publisher at the Hartford Courant and The Sun in Baltimore.
For today, then, I’m dubbing Waller “The Sage of South Carolina.”
Apparently we can do little but fret about the decline of The Star and other papers. But please keep fretting in the hope that from the despair somehow some twist back toward wider readership will happen.
I still am surprised when I run into significant civic figures here in town who do not subscribe to The Star. I refer to a report or an opinion piece, and they say, “Well, send that to me.”
The click-incentive induces bad writing (case in point: Aaron Randle’s ignorant, puffy story in Sunday’s Star) and creates distraction instead of focus. The quality of our community is losing a common hub of conversation.
I subscribe to the Times and the Post — and The Star — and follow other news sources, national and local (such as KCPT’s), because it is my duty as a citizen to be well informed. Why isn’t there enough local money to buy The Star to create a non-profit in such a way that, with a sort of “family feel.” we assert through our support, a kind of ownership of our own paper? Ownership would likely improve readership — and citizenship.
Gee, I missed that story about “KCK man’s viral food videos.” Really compelling stuff…Seems like anything that “goes viral” these days is prime material for The Star.
…I think you’re right about it being almost a “duty” to be well informed. A well-informed citizenry knows when to be outraged and when to shrug, when to vote “yes” and when to vote “no” and, generally, which candidates offer the best prospect for solid and reliable leadership. Trouble soon arrives when people who are ill informed and susceptible to the siren song of charlatans hold sway.
I missed that one, too! I was actually referring to the story about religion, http://www.kansascity.com/living/religion/article188544194.html
about which it is clear the reporter is unacquainted with recent religious history or the scope of faith in Kansas City, and looks through a narrow keyhole.
Nonprofit approaches are getting a lot of interest around the country.
The newest and most ambitious such effort is in Philadelphia, where The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and their joint web portal, Philly.com, are owned by the Philadelphia Foundation, thanks to some big-time local philanthropy. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Media_Network
An older nonprofit effort is The Day in New London, Conn. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_(New_London)
And then there’s the Tampa Bay Times, which is owned by the nonprofit Poynter Institute; this is a very idiosyncratic institution, but it delivers not only a great newspaper but also, through Poynter, great journalism education.
I’m familiar with Poynter, of course, but didn’t know about the Connecticut paper and had not kept track of every twist and turn The Inquirer has taken since McClatchy sold it off as part of its KnightRidder acquisition in 2006. It sounds like The Inquirer, deservedly, has entered a time of peace and, hopefully, prosperity.
(Readers, Tom is a former managing editor of The Kansas City Times, which was the morning edition of The Star before The Times was discontinued.)
Investors and stock holders demand performance and profits in publicly owned newspapers; privately owned newspapers will accept smaller profits because of community roots and personal pride in the what they’re giving the public. Wall Street at work.
My hometown newspaper, The Columbia Daily Tribune, recently was purchased by Gatehouse Media after being in the Waters family for almost a century. The Tribune was wonderful local resource where many reporters for the Star and Post-Dispatch got their legs before going to a bigger paper. Hank Water’s editorials provoked civic conversation for years and for a time some of the best reporting out of Jefferson City was being done by Tribune reporters. According to my Columbia Facebook friends, since the ownership change the paper has begun its decline.
I looked up some of the papers in Missouri that Gateway owns,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_owned_by_GateHouse_Media#Missouri some of the papers owned or operated by storied Missouri Journalism families, the Cables in Hannibal, the Briggs in Macon, the Plummers in Chillicothe and the Swains in Kirksville. Sad.
The success of smaller community newspapers is why I suggested that The Star mimic that model by creating several local community editions that are inserted into a section on national news and sports, with additional local editions available at extra cost..
Overlooked here is the recent sale of the Lawrence Journal-World. The Simons family bled KU Crimson and Blue in a way that I doubt will be embraced by the new corporate owners. As a result of family ownership they had one of the finest news gathering organizations I’ve seen anywhere. Their investigative work during Bill Graves administration was outstanding and Dolph Simons’ opposition to Kathleen Sebelius’ attempts to gut KU Med’s profit centers on behalf of her Missouri benefactors produced quality acts of journalism rarely seen anywhere. I guarantee you the news product going forward will never reach the heights it did during family ownership.