‘It’s worth something to support them’: Newspapers cling to crucial local role | Opinion

As someone who spent his career writing, editing, and loving newspaper stories, I feel what old sailing masters must have with the arrival of steam engines. Sentiment aside, though, technology has brought change that is not all for the better.

A recent study called “The State of Public Trust in Local News” says, unsurprisingly, that trust is down (as it is in nearly all institutions these days). Specifically, skepticism and downright hostility to national media have infected attitudes toward the newspaper or TV station whose mission is holding a mirror to its community.

Try as they might to be nonpartisan, though (and on news pages, most do), local newspapers operate in an age when people can and do go to the internet or cable television to find news tailored to reinforce their preferences.

All this translates into a too-convenient argument that newspapers are dying because of political bias. The story is much more complicated.

When I began my career, the United States had about 1,700 daily newspapers, most locally owned, most healthy. Their combined circulation was some 60 million. It didn’t cost much to subscribe, and a dime would get you a copy from a coin box. A bargain — but the newspaper owners almost literally didn’t need that money. At least two-thirds of their income came from advertising.

Auto dealers took full-page ads. Late in the week, papers were fat with grocery store bargains. Local department stores were major advertisers. And the classifieds! Page after page, filled with tiny type, paid for by the line. If you were looking for a job, or looking to fill one, you went to the classifieds. If you were looking for a house, or wanted to sell one, looking to rent, wanting to buy or sell a used car ...

It’s all online now, on many discrete sites that have nothing to do with newspapers. That revenue has been lost to newspapers, as has that business model.

Local papers, many with civic-minded, multi-generational owners, began selling to corporations that counted on efficiencies to bring back profits. They cut the dimensions of the newspapers and the number of pages (newsprint is a major, major expense in this business). They cut staff, meaning good weekend stories don’t get covered, national stories don’t get localized, bad headlines don’t get caught. The daily paper I edited until my retirement had almost 100 newsroom employees at its peak. Last I heard, that number was nine, and it no longer is a daily. Multi-market owners consolidated printing sites. Printing the paper far away means starting the presses earlier, which means earlier deadlines, which means less timely news.

You don’t need an economics degree to deduce that offering customers a smaller, less complete product at higher cost might hurt business. So now we have about 500 fewer daily newspapers than when I started. Circulation of printed newspapers is about half of what it was then.

Ironically, large national newspapers scorned by partisans of either side — The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal — are doing fine, online. Their website content is good enough and accessible enough that people are willing to pay for it. Most local papers haven’t figured out how to do that, or, in the age of Amazon, move enough local advertising to their sites to survive and prosper.

I wish I knew the answer. Rag on the local paper all you want, but where else are you going to find out about plans for the bridges, details of the school referendum, how the Town Council is spending your tax money, how the courts are operating, how civic and charitable organizations are helping people around here?

I’ve always loved the slogan that a small newspaper in Mississippi prints under its nameplate each day: “The Only Newspaper in The World That Cares Anything About Itawamba County!” Every community needs those; it’s worth something to support them.

Joe Distelheim of Hilton Head Island was an editor at the Charlotte Observer and sports editor at the Detroit Free Press. He retired as editor of The Huntsville Times in Alabama. He is an editor and occasional writer for The Hardball Times web site and a volunteer at The Literacy Center.

This story was originally published February 23, 2020 at 5:45 AM.