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Newspaper Survival Tactics

Some people who read what I have written about news media might think that I would like to see the demise of newspapers – they would be wrong. I do think that news organizations generally need to make some adjustments to better serve their purpose (am am assuming a purpose of informing their audience). As I read a story in the Deseret News about their growth I saw two happy bits of information that illustrate the kinds of changes that can help the industry to survive. (I take no position on the Deseret News specifically, it is just the example at hand.)

The first is that it is possible for multiple publications to compete and survive.

Joe Cannon, now in his third year as editor, set out to make the newspaper and its Web site more appealing to Mormon readers. The effort already has made the paper’s Web site unusually active for a news organization its size, with 17 million page views a month. Visitors tend to linger, and half of them are from outside Utah, affirming Cannon’s strategy even as online advertising revenues remain marginal.

His aim is to reach out to "a very large Mormon diaspora across the country" that "puts us into a much larger pond," said Cannon, who was on the board of the Deseret News for a decade before taking over as editor. . .

Cannon said by making news coverage "more Mormon" he means appealing to a market niche larger than Utah instead of just a circulation territory.

This shift in focus at the Deseret News suggests a possible approach that would allows competing papers to coexist within the same market. In some ways it is not the same market because The Tribune is catering to the geographic region while the Deseret News is catering to the dominant culture of the region – even outside the immediate vicinity of the paper. The evidence of this is in the statement that "[t]he Salt Lake Tribune still is profitable, and together with the Deseret News is expected to remain on the short list of two-newspaper towns."

The second piece of good news is that "[s]mall newspapers are generally holding their own because of unique demographics." This seems to validate things I have read suggesting that the quality of papers were falling as they tried to put more emphasis on non-local coverage. To me this would suggest, for example, that the Provo Daily Herald should have it’s "your town" coverage of outlying cities such as Lehi and Eagle Mountain replaced by local papers – possibly with a joint operating agreement between the various Utah County papers. I’ll bet that the Herald and the new local paper(s) would be better able to serve the population of Utah County than the current setup. (Similar to my previous disclaimer -this is nota  complaint against the Herald, but it should offer hope to any areas that feel underserved by it that there is an alternative path available.)

By David

David is the father of 8 children. When he's not busy with that full time occupation he works as a technology professional. He enjoys discussing big issues with informed people, cooking, gardening, vexillology (flag design), and tinkering.

6 replies on “Newspaper Survival Tactics”

I think it’s why the Herald Journal has enjoyed insulation from the newspaper slump (mostly) in Cache Valley. They are literally isolated geographically, and manage to fill the majority of each edition with local news, keeping national relegated to the “national” page only. If a viable competitor arose, they would both survive, but if either they or their hypothetical competitor attempted to expand coverage into Box Elder or Weber Counties, they would fail.

The Standard-Examiner attempted an office in Logan for a while, and as I understand it, it was a gigantic flop for them.

Thanks for sharing another good example. I am curious though – do you really think that Cache Valley has a population large enough to support two local papers?

It should be noted that the D-News and SL-Trib survive together, not solely due to some focus differentiation, but also (perhaps mainly) due to a special exemption to anti-trust laws that allows them to share many costs. I think that could be a successful model for many two-newspaper towns.

Is their JOA really unique in some way? The article stated that there are other multi-newspaper markets where the newspapers share costs. I had the impression that this was the same kind of setup.

The JOA is not completely unique, but there are only a total of seven such agreements in effect today. Per 1970 legislation, the details of each JOA must be approved by the federal government.

Interestingly, the JOA legislation was intended to give a boost to the ‘declining’ newspaper industry. And that was 39 years ago before the Internet and widespread cable TV! In other words, the newspaper industry’s deterioration has been going on for a long time, even before the advent of the “new media.”

There have been a total of 28 JOAs in the history of the legislation, meaning that 21 are no longer effective. In most of those cases, one of the partner papers eventually folded. In a few cases, the two partner papers merged to become a single paper. A few discontinued their JOA and continued publishing.

So perhaps my earlier comment overrated the value of a JOA. However, I think it is reasonably certain that one of the two Salt Lake papers would be out of business today without their JOA.

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