I’ve been poring over the latest Kansas City Star circulation data, and everything I see leads me to believe one of two things is going on:
Either management is not doing a good job of tracking digital subscriptions, or its push to sharply increase digital subscriptions is tanking.
Print subscriptions have been steadily dwindling for 20 years, of course, and The Star, like other papers, has been emphasizing the transition to digital.
What concerns me — and what should be of great concern to all Kansas City Star employees, especially upper management — is that statistics indicate digital subscriptions were down slightly more than 50 percent between December 2016 and December 2017.
For the quarter ending December 2016, the Alliance for Audited Media, a trade organization, showed The Star with 12,908 stand-alone, digital subscriptions. For the quarter ending December 2017, the figure stood at 6,471.
(Those figures do not include digital subscriptions that automatically go with print subscriptions.)
Again, the remarkable thing about those numbers is that for years The Star’s owner, McClatchy Co., had been emphasizing the transition from print to digital.
Another number that does not seem to square with the reported digital decline is that McClatchy reported a nearly 15-percent increase in digital-only advertising between 2016 and 2017. (In case you’re wondering, McClatchy does not break down advertising revenue for each of its 29 daily newspapers; it just gives overall figures.)
The 15-percent increase is good news, but “softness” in print advertising continues to drag down the company’s overall performance: It lost $34.2 million last year.
Like I said at the outset, the reported downswing in digital subscriptions is a mystery. If The Star cannot get its figures straight, that’s a problem in and of itself. If the numbers are accurate, it’s an even bigger problem.
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Odds and ends:
:: The Star saw average paid Sunday print circulation dip from 119,892 to 118,203 between the third and fourth quarters of last year. Average Monday-to-Friday print circulation fell from 78,122 to 76,853.
:: At year’s end, corporate debt stood at $873.7 million, continuing the long hangover from McClatchy’s ill-advised purchase of the Knight Ridder chain for $4.5 billion in 2006.
:: In a news release accompanying the fourth-quarter report, McClatchy president and C.E.O. Craig Forman said, “Our intent is to sharpen our connections to our local markets, both in terms of audience and advertising, by accelerating our digital product and sales efforts.”
Looks to me like the focal point of the acceleration effort should right here in Kansas City.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Hmmm…JimmyC…I wonder what impact the actual “work product” has had on the Star’s dwindling circulation.
When you are greeted by a front-page banner call-out admonishing you to “stop policing womanhood” by an angry young female scribbling as a commentator, it makes your head hurt! Then, you take your daily beating from an editorial cabal positioned just slightly to the right of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors…wow, it just gets too tedious, if not farcical.
And what about those by-lines from staffers (I guess) reporting on the weird and wonderful that happened days and weeks ago in Switchblade, Nebraska or Mountainsville, West Virginia? Why aren’t those journo resources assigned to find the weird or wonderful here in river city?”
So, as I’m still paying for the print edition (and digital) of this dying little broadsheet, you can call me “starred for life.”
For real, the editorial board is center-right to the max. There is no universe in which they are far left, outside of the loony Alex Jones fringe. And Osterheldt’s columns are usually thought-provoking, well-written and worth a read, even if you disagree with her points. But hey, whatever makes your head feel better.
I’m also not sure that “cabal” means “group of people on the editorial board of a newspaper,” either.
Third graf contains solid points, though.
One of the many problems plaguing THE STAR is the IT system frequently is dysfunctional for members. At least four times recently, I have attempted to enter on my computer and the pay wall offers me a subscription — when I am paid up. I call the designated phone number to get assistance and the person has difficulty communicating in English. These are “killer issues” if the paper is to survive. Thank you!
I fight the same battle, Joe…Every once in a while, I am forced to “prove” that I’m a paid subscriber (providing user name and password) before being given renewed digital access. You’d think their computer system could at least track who’s in and who’s out and not periodically insult those who are already on board.
I think so much of it comes down to quality. It used to take hours to read the Sunday paper and now I can blow through it in about an hour. The price keeps going up and the quality goes down. My husband and I keep going around and around about keeping the paper because of this. But where else do we get local news, what there is of it? I am old school and I don’t want to get my news from a computer every day. I want to sit on the couch with my paper, a warm drink, and indulge. The editorials are interesting and I always enjoy the letters to the editor. But the daily content just continues to dwindle. Very sad.
First, their paywall doesn’t work. A child could read anything they want for free. Secondly, I have long argued that they should dump their editorial staff in favor of more local “As I See It” columns covering both sides of an issue like USA Today does/did? Third, fire Fannin and get an editor who’s on the same page as the publisher. Fourth, find more reporters like Steve Vockrodt and Mike Hendricks, who can actually do real investigative work and let the Lowrys and Woodalls cover the local color stuff they can’t screw up.
As for where people are getting their news, if you check the Facebook pages of the local TV news stations even the weakest of the bunch kicks the snot out of The Star digitally. The weakest of the lot (KSHB) has 225,138 who follow them (even more likes) versus 156,533 who follow The Star. Fox 4 has 441,295 who follow them; KMBC has 316,110 followers; and KCTV5, 378,811 (note their improvement over the dying news division at KMBC). So much for The Star leading digital output in Kansas City
Oh, for the most part I read the Wichita Eagle. Jonathon Shorman is probably the best person covering the legislature right now and Dion Lefler also does some very good work (and I don’t think they even have a pay wall).
Sure, the Eagle has a paywall. It’s a McClatchy paper. They’ve all got it. Not sure how many free views you get per month, but it’s not many.
…I hope you don’t handle your taxes like you do The Star’s paywall. Outrageous! You can’t demand more and better reporters and, at the same time, not pay for the content the reporters provide.
I seldom go over the limit for freebies. If I want information on something I look for original sources (currently I’m reading the latest Gannon decision from our loopy Supreme Court). My point however is that while Berg touts the visits to The Star’s website few are paying to go there. Secondly, I seldom see The Star referenced on Facebook (where most folks get their news). Instead, people reference tv news where there is no paywall and far fewer annoying pop up ads. Better they should focus on delivering the printed product they have now and service their paying customers.
Refusing to pay the outrageous subscription costs for the Kleenex that is the Arkansas Democrat Gazette here in Arkansas, I’m turning to the free TV news online. I can at least get headlines and an idea of local news. It’s the news for gods sake. Most of the papers are holding it hostage unless we pay royally. Most of what’s being said here about KCS could be said about the ADG.
I always loved the fact that Walter E. Hussman, owner of the Democrat, was able to stand down Gannett, when it owned the Gazette and the Gazette was trying to run the Democrat out of business. Hussman finally won, however, and took control of the Gazette — thus today’s Democrat Gazette.
I remember a quote of Hussman’s that went something like this: “If they lose, they go on to other jobs at other papers; if I lose, I’m out of business.”
My parents were living in northeast Arkansas at the time. The Democrat and the Gazette each were selling for 15 cents and offering free classified. I remember thinking: “Surely Gannett’s pockets are deeper than Walter Hussman’s!”
It’s a sad, sad situation. And it’s getting more and more absurd. 300,000 by 2000!
That goal (for daily circulation), dating to a late 1990s marketing program, is indeed laughable in retrospect.
“Bam, We’re Daily!” Brisbane wearing boxing gloves. What a #@% joke that was!
I’ve got to admit, I loved that line, “Bam, you’re daily” — as in the paper hitting your porch. But they never used it; they used some dumb line, and, bam, circ started falling!
Thanks Jim! I never got it until now: the “bam” was supposed to be the paper hitting your porch, Now that I understand it, I guess it was a pretty good slogan.
That’s never the impression I got. All I remember is The Star’s top brass decked in boxing gloves and looking ridiculous.
If it was supposed to be something other than the sound of the paper hitting the porch, it shows how far off the mark the marketing campaign was. The whole thing was a disaster. If they would have just stuck with “Bam, you’re daily!” and had an image of the paper hitting the porch, The Star probably would have hit the 300,000 daily mark and would still be highly profitable today. (Ha!)
And Weekend Editor Bob Lynn would still be bringing us Rosedale BBQ when we pulled weekend duty in the newsroom. Maybe in a parallel universe somewhere out there …?
It was, “Bam! I’m Daily.” I still have my T-shirt, which I never wear.
I’d buy it from you, Les, but I never, ever wear T-shirts…
Thank you, Les. I didn’t think “Bam, You’re Daily” sounded right, but I don’t have the T-shirt. Once again, you have demonstrated the importance of good copy editors.
It’s a pretty simple equation: severely shrunken newshole + skeleton staffing x a subscription rate 3 or 4 times less than what it was 15 years ago = cancellation. Between TV news websites and local blogs, one can stay abreast of local news pretty well without the Star.
Nonetheless, I still subscribe to the digital edition of the Star, and I rely on it for local news reporting, analysis and commentary. I hope it will be here for a long time to come.