The other day, I read an article at the guardian about the upcoming (August 31) closure of Youngstown Ohio’s only print newspaper: The Vindicator. After 150 years of publication, the paper was no longer economically viable. This is far from the only such story. A 247wallstreet.com story by Douglas McIntyre quotes Penny Abernathy, the Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Media and Journalism; and author of The Expanding News Desert :
Abernathy told 24/7 Wall St. that, “It appears at this stage that we’ve lost approximately 2,100 papers, all but 70 of which are weeklies, since 2004.” The industry implosion has left almost half of the counties in America (1,449) with only one newspaper, which is usually a weekly. As of the most recent count, 171 counties do not have a paper at all
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No one in the newspaper business has come up with a solution to the industry’s falling revenue. Very few newspapers continue to flourish. Among them is The New York Times. Well over 3 million people pay for digital versions of the paper and its other products. Management has set a goal to reach 10 million paid subscribers by 2025. The Times, however, can afford a newsroom large enough to create a product that is unequaled anywhere else in the United States. The editorial staff of the paper is over 1,200 people.
While the Times flourishes, only one other U.S. paper (leaving aside The Wall Street Journal) has done well. The Washington Post, owned by Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, is said to be profitable and growing. That makes the list of highly successful papers, financially, in the United States as a club of two.
Another handful of papers, mostly large city dailies, are owned and supported by billionaires or nonprofits. These include the newspapers in Boston, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and Tampa. Even these properties are not immune to the industry’s problems. The papers in Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and Tampa have recently cut staff.
My daily read: The Roanoke Times, is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, as For the soon to be extinct Vindicator:
From the Guardian By Adam Gabbatt
It was in the late 1920s that the Ku Klux Klan regularly began gathering outside the home of William F Maag Jr in Youngstown. Maag owned the Vindicator newspaper, which unlike others in this once prosperous part of Ohio, had been willing to criticize the racist Klansmen. Men on horseback, clad in white robes and hoods, would burn crosses and flaunt rifles and shotguns, in an attempt at intimidation. It didn’t work. The men of the Maag family would stand outside their home, themselves armed, refusing to be cowed, as the Vindicator continued to expose government officials who were part of the Klan.
That defiance set the tone for decades of investigative, combative reporting from the Vindicator. The daily newspaper relentlessly reported on the mafia, the government, big business and even its own advertisers.
But no more. Soon after celebrating 150 years since its first edition came news that was devastating to many in Youngstown and the wider Mahoning valley. The Vindicator was shutting down at the end of August. For good.
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Despite the quality of the coverage, sales have declined over the past four decades. From selling 100,000 copies in the late 1970s – 160,000 on Sundays – the Vindicator is now down to 25,000 editions daily, and 32,000 on Sunday. The paper has lost money for 20 of the last 22 years, Brown said, with a family fund covering the losses. Brown hoped to ultimately sell the Vindicator, but no buyers were forthcoming. He explored a paywall, but the numbers didn’t work. Neither did making the Vindicator online-only.“The demise of newspapers, I think, is scary for any democracy. Because I think newspapers have been totally under appreciated for what they have done to keep the government in check. To prevent corruption, to keep people honest,” Brown said.
“That’s what scares me the most, is I’m not sure who provides that check. And you have to have it. History has shown you have to have that balance if you want to maintain a democracy. And we’re about to lose it.”
It strikes me that these unsurprising stories are more than just sad. They are also worrisome in a civic sense.
When I was 12, I wanted a new bike with banana seat and high rise handlebars. My Dad said we couldn’t afford it, but that wasn’t the end of it. I read in the local newspaper that they needed people to deliver their daily afternoon edition, and kids as young as 12 could be paperboys! I showed it to Dad and asked if I could get the bike If I used it to take this job and Pay for it? He took me to a locally owned department store and helped me make a payment plan for the bike I wanted! We then went to the newspaper office and I signed up. I started the next Monday. The Paper gave me a “Route” of customers and advanced me a number of copies to deliver each day. Each week I would collect from the customers and pay for the papers I had gotten. I got a quarter a week for each “account” and with these earnings paid for my bike over the next 1 1/2 years!
Every day after school ,and on Saturday Afternoon (No Sunday paper), I would ride my bike to the newspaper pressing plant (downstairs from the Office) to pick up my papers. Sometimes I’d get there early on Saturday and hang out with the press gang and watch them thread the giant rolls of paper into the presses; burning the printing plates and inking them up. The foreman liked me and would sometimes let me press the big green button that started the machines’ thunderous run. As the finished papers came off the presses, they were stacked and counted. I would get my share, roll and rubber band them and put them in the Canvas Paper sack they gave me. Looping its strap over the handlebars, I’d head out on my route slinging my tightly rolled papers onto porches and driveways; racing away from neighborhood dogs and jumping from road to sidewalk to empty lot so as to finish as quickly as possible. I didn’t stop being a paperboy until I was 16, by which time I was delivering two routes with 120 papers daily. I liked it but at sixteen I could legally do better paying restaurant work so I left the News business. But The civic value of teaching kids like me about the value of work and economic processes was significant.