I never thought I would say this, but as of today I’m going to recommend that people stop taking the print edition of The Kansas City Star.
Not only are most editions very thin but much less care is going into their production.
One problem I see is the same story appearing more than once in the same edition, with different headlines and sometimes different content.
Another is copy dumping, that is, stories “jumping” from the front page to the inside with huge blocks of copy consuming inordinate amounts of space inside, with little attention being paid to visual appeal.
In addition, I continue to hear complaints about delivery problems. Executives have been working to fix the problems for a few years, since the previous publisher fired an incompetent circulation vice president.
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Like everyone else, I’ve been aware of the atrophying and deteriorating print product for a long time. What I am just realizing, however, is that The Star, through its owner McClatchy, is simply taking advantage of subscribers who don’t want to part with their print editions. Some people are hanging on because they’re not technologically inclined. Others just like holding the paper in their hands and reading it leisurely.
Intentionally, McClatchy and The Star have raised print-product prices to unsustainable levels. Oh, you can get a start-up deal on the daily paper for $33.19 for the first four weeks and $23.20 for the ensuing four weeks, but once they get you into their clutches, they want as much as $80 a month for the privilege of continuing home delivery seven days a week. That’s almost as much as the retail rate for the daily and Sunday New York Times, the best paper in the country.
On the other hand, you can get a digital KC Star subscription for $12.99 a month, which, in my view, is very reasonable.
(Disclaimer: As a KC Star retiree, I get an incredible deal on the print product — $10.74 a month — and will continue being a print subscriber unless The Star reneges on that commitment.)
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Why, you might ask, is McClatchy jacking up the rates for print subscriptions?
It’s simple. Most of the news-consuming world has moved on to the Internet, and McClatchy and the other newspaper chains, seeing the print product fizzling out, are milking the diehard print subscribers to the max.
The Star’s latest circulation figures, for the first quarter of 2018, show the continuing downward spiral of the print product. Between the fourth quarter of 2017 and the first quarter of 2018, average paid Sunday print circulation went from 118,203 to 115,023.
Average Monday-Friday print circulation fell even more, from 76,853 to 72,294.
(At the same time, digital subscriptions don’t appear to be increasing very fast, with the stand-alone digital-subscription figure still at less than 10,000.)
Yesterday I read an article that opened my eyes to exactly what McClatchy and some other newspaper chains are doing. The article, by Jack Shafer of Politico Magazine, likened the average print subscriber to “your grandfather who is on dialysis, has a pacemaker and totes an oxygen tank behind him. He looks alive, but he’s overdue.”
Jack Shafer
Shafer went on to say: “Your grandfather is a pretty good stand-in for the average newspaper subscriber, too. Habituated to his morning newspaper, he’ll resist cancelling his subscription no matter how raggedy the paper gets or how high the owners jack up the price.”
In business circle, there’s a name for the tactic McClatchy and some other chains are using — “harvesting market position.”
Shafer linked to another writer, Philip Meyer, who wrote about “harvesting market position” in his book The Vanishing Newspaper.
Meyer wrote:
“A stagnant industry’s market position is harvested by raising prices and lowering quality, trusting that customers will continue to be attracted by the brand name rather than the substance for which the brand once stood. Eventually, of course, they will wake up. But as the harvest metaphor implies, this is a nonrenewable, take-the-money-and-run strategy. A given crop can be harvested only once.”
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So, it’s very clear what McClatchy is doing. Buried under $710 million in debt, its executives have decided not to waste any more time than absolutely necessary on the print editions of its 29 daily papers. While print still generates a majority of the company’s revenue, print is much more expensive to produce than digital. By focusing on the transition to digital, the chain can continue to cut employees and still produce a relatively substantive digital product.
The Star is probably the most profitable of McClatchy’s 29 daily papers, and what the parent company is doing is pulling money out of Kansas City and sending it back to Sacramento to try to knock down that debt (which stood at $1 billion after McClatchy purchased the KnightRidder chain for a mind-boggling $4.5 billion in 2006).
The best thing that could happen is for a local group or an individual to buy The Star and stabilize it, or even start guiding it a few steps back up the ladder.
In the meantime, it’s time to stop rewarding McClatchy for ruining the print product and for print subscribers to stop being sucked into McClatchy’s version of a corn combine. From now on, when people complain to me about The Star’s exorbitant retail price for the print edition, I’m going to borrow a line from Royals’ TV color commentator Rex Hudler:
“You got to go!”
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
I just renewed my print subscription for about $255/year. I thought that was pretty reasonable considering the ridiculous newstand price. I’m one of those that likes to hold the paper. And get Sunday coupons. :-)
I don’t know how you got that…That’s the lowest renewal rate I’ve heard in years. On the other hand, I’ve had people tell me they were quoted $80 a month ($960 a year) and that The Star wouldn’t budge. I still say dump it; they’ve washed their hands of a quality print product.
Hearne is reporting that he got a subscription offer for $129.86 a year for 7 day a weel delivery.
OGFY, Fitz
The other side weighs is…Welcome to the Comments Dept., Sick.
Really intelligent comment, “Sick,” and really brave to hide behind a fake name. Which member of Star senior management are you?
My thought exactly. Cut him off, Jim. We don’t want “that” kind of Comments section.
Good article, Jim. Over a decade ago we coined the phrase “Dead Trees Walking” to describe the looming demise of daily newspapers. The timelines for story production and distribution make it impossible to cover current news in daily print. The current effort to replace The Star with a quality community media company is “Catch A Falling Star!” It’s too late to save The Star from the corporate ownership’s financial policies.
Thanks, Richard.
What you say is absolutely true. Every month the price goes up and up and the quality goes down. We go around and around in our house about whether or not to drop the paper because we both like to hold the paper in our hands and I want a source for local news. So my husband calls up and threatens to drop our subscription and they hold the line on the cost – for now. I know it is only a matter of time until we have to drop the paper but since I spend my entire day on a computer at work, I want old school at home. :)
I completely understand, Lynne. It would take me a few months to get used to not having the print edition, but the time is coming. As local papers drop their print editions, I think it will be a boon to The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, national papers that will be putting out print for a long time to come. Some people dedicated to “hands on” will switch to one or both of those.
I always wondered if the NYT would produce a Kansas City section for the print edition and make it work financially?
They won’t develop city-by-city editions, Tom. That would mean having not one but several reporters in every major city. NYT aspires to be national, not local. They set that as their goal about 20 to 25 years ago, and they’ve made it happen.
About 6 or 8 months ago I told one of the out-sourced foreign subscription representatives that I would not continue my subscription. The paper kept coming for 2 months. When they called me about my overdue bill, admittedly I went off on them and told them I wasn’t paying for a subscription I had cancelled.
Now I’m getting letters from a collection agency threatening to sue me. Here’s the kicker- every few weeks I get a sales call offering the Star at greatly reduced prices to ‘win me back’. The last call offered a 6-months subscription for $93.00 total. That’s right, one price of 90-some dollars for 6 months.
I’ve accepted the offers twice (who wouldn’t at these ridiculous prices). Neither time however, was my credit card charged and I never did receive the paper.
So here I am, at a virtual showdown at the OK Corral with the KC Star.
Do they want me back or not? SMH
Ditto on Chuck Morris comment. I was a subscriber for 55 years, mailed to me in college, Viet Nam and Desert Storm, always hung in there with home delivery. Always paid ahead for a year. This time the bill in March came four months early. Ignored but then another repeat bill. Gave them a call to be told I only had a 38-month subscription, not a year like my receipt shows. Hmm. That was enough for me.
Skinny paper, questionable billing procedures, poor content, typos, amateur reporting, so I cancelled. And now the collector bills have begun for $90. A.R.M. Solutions is buying some really poor debt for their debt collection business. I think I might lawyer up and play this out for the fun of it. I’d write a letter to the editor, but that certainly won’t work. If solution to KC Star quality problem is digital, I don’t get it. Still bare local reporting, poor content, typos, amateurs, etc. Local ownership with deep pockets is only way to salvage this critical local asset. Purchase, transition to non-profit, local communities dedicating 1% of budget for local news company (ies) just like the arts? Who knows. We need a viable, independent, local news consolidator almost as much as we need fire and police protection.
The only “deals” being offered are for start-up subscriptions or perhaps renewals for people who have been taking the paper a year or two at most. The long-term subscribers are getting hit hardest on renewals because McClatchy knows those are the people who are least likely to drop, regardless of price.
Based on Chuck’s and George’s experiences, I’d suggest that once your subscription runs out — and you don’t want it any more — call and tell them to stop delivering. And make a note of who you talked to and when so that if and when the collection agency comes after you, you can go back to The Star (the overseas Star) and cite facts.
The fireworks are over. Only the smoke remains. The new landscape revealed in morning’s light will be a job for the next generation to negotiate; for our generation has failed in our mission to kill Anthony Fremont. The Peaksville of our day is gone.