Industry News

Change In An Enduring Institution

Eric Conrad, News-Times Editor

A long time ago, singer Neil Young proclaimed that "rock 'n' roll will never die." Aggressive local journalism won't either.
But the daily newspaper industry is in the middle of one of its most turbulent periods, as The News-Times and greater Danbury learned last week when Dow Jones & Co. Inc. decided to sell this daily newspaper and five others after 50 years of quality ownership here.

American newspapers are changing hands with unparalleled frequency. During the past 18 months, 168 daily newspapers were sold.

That's one in nine.

Mergers and acquisitions, and the fallout from them, have reached a point where the Newspaper Association of America last week published a magazine supplement called "Fusion" to help executives and editors lead employees through all the white water.

Change naturally is difficult, and that's especially true for "mature" industries like publishing. Constant change at start-up software companies is a given, and can be part of the allure for people who work there.

The newspaper changes aren't all bad, either. For starters, the industry needed a jolt. During the 1970s and '80s, circulation numbers were softening but profits were so high many newspapers just plodded along. Today, we constantly re-examine what we do in print and we are innovating at our news Web sites in ways that have surprised some doubtful analysts.

It's better to be in this American business than in music retailing, shoe-making and many others. How would you like to be in SUV sales right now?

Dow Jones' announcement that it would sell The News-Times -- which came with a Dec. 31 deadline -- caused concern among our 200 employees, many of whom have never worked for a media company other than Ottaway Newspapers, which is the community newspaper division of Dow Jones.

Our publisher, Sam Gett, had six meetings with managers and employees last week to share what he knew about Dow Jones' intentions. I'd describe the tone of those meetings as serious but by no means scared.

Many of us "newcomers" to Danbury have been through this before. This is the fourth time that Gett has worked at a newspaper that was put up for sale; it's happened to me twice. (I've worked at six different daily newspapers.)

But it's never easy. Employees wonder about job security, a future owner's commitment to quality journalism, and about practical things like what happens to their pensions and health-care benefits.

On the other hand, the public and the communities served by a daily newspaper typically react mildly, and that's been true in Danbury so far.

We can track how many people read each story at our Web site, NewsTimesLive.com. And while Tuesday's story about the sale of The News-Times led all other news stories that day in reader popularity, far more people -- six times more, to be precise -- read our story last Sunday examining the recent drowning deaths at Squantz Pond State Park.

Government and business leaders tend to react the strongest because they've established ties to the people working at and running the newspaper. They also recognize and value that a newspaper isn't like most 200-employee businesses in their area.

They're right about that. Newspapers and their Web sites exist and make money by informing readers about their communities, state, nation and world. Journalists believe they serve society and our democracy by informing people who feel it's worth spending money every day to be informed.

And there's the rub: Increasingly, readers of all ages -- not just people under 20 or 30 -- are going to the Internet for their news. News on the Web is updated all the time. Stories there are often more titillating and quicker to read. And best of all, in most cases, they're free.

Now the theory is that as more people -- more "eyeballs" -- shift from print newspapers to newspaper Web sites, advertising dollars will follow them. And that is happening. But right now, during this turbulent period that is seeing sale after newspaper sale, it isn't happening fast enough.

So the companies that own newspapers are forced to make tough choices. Do they sell the daily newspapers that have been so profitable for so long (and still are, relative to many other industries)? Do they try to maintain profit levels just by cutting costs year after year, as print circulation numbers and advertising sales gradually degrade? Or do they sell some of their newspapers to protect the most profitable and/or prestigious ones, and buy Internet and other companies so they can prepare for tomorrow?

There are a few ironies in all of this.

The first is that after a newspaper is sold, the product itself tends to change only slightly. In 1998, the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram -- where I worked at the time -- was sold by a prominent Maine family who had owned it since the 1930s. It was bought by the Seattle Times Co., which now has six daily newspapers in Washington and Maine and is controlled by another family led by Frank Blethen of Seattle.

Mainers reacted with a higher degree of concern than what Danbury has so far, asking what a Washington-based company would do to a Maine family's legacy. Seattle is known for birthing Starbucks. Maine's known for L.L Bean. To some, it seemed like an odd fit.

What happened was the newspaper -- viewed by journalists, at least, as being quite good in 1998 -- is considered to be quite good today, and probably even better than it was. Its mission of covering Maine news aggressively didn't change. It continues to be independent on its editorial pages. It tries to reflect what's happening in its communities as best it can.

Another irony is that, despite all the doom and gloom one reads about the newspaper business these days, virtually every newspaper put on the market finds a buyer. And quickly. That's because a typical newspaper still returns an annual profit of 15 or 20 percent (or higher), which is better than many businesses.

But there's more. The truth is -- and you don't read this enough -- that more people are reading aggressive community journalism than they were a few years back. That's right, more people are reading what we write, and are viewing our photos and graphics each day, not fewer people.

It's true at The News-Times. Our circulation was roughly flat from 2005 to mid-2006. We sell 29,700 copies daily and about 33,000 Sunday. Since a typical newspaper is read by about 2.5 people, this means roughly 75,000 people in western Connecticut read The News-Times daily and see many of the advertisements in it.

No one else really covers local news in our part of the state on a daily -- or, with NewsTimesLive.com, even an hourly -- basis. Television reporters rarely step foot in our area. Weekly newspapers are just that -- weekly.

The Internet and some amazing technological advancements permit us to put audio, video and text together on our Web site very quickly. We're still learning how to do this well. But The News-Times has begun this, putting us in a position to be an all-day news operation online, with video and audio that newspaper folks never used before.

As you might expect, online readership in Danbury is up dramatically, from an average of 49,000 "page views" (number of stories and items read or scanned) daily last year to around 80,000 page views a day now. On good days, we top 100,000. That bodes well for the future.

Through one medium or another, it would seem, people continue to sense that they must keep informed about local events and trends if they want to succeed and to be good citizens. Or, maybe it's just that keeping up with the local news is a fun thing to do.

Either way, that's why good local journalism is here to stay. If only we can solve this money thing.


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