Scott Swanson
I’m recently back from the annual convention of the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association, which was really interesting this year.
Times have been tough all around for newspapers. Not only did the economic downturn have more of an impact on local newspapers than I initially hoped it might (having stated so rather boldly in a column a few years back, when things started to go downhill), but competition from the Internet (Google, Yahoo) has made life difficult for traditional newspapers, which have had trouble figuring out where they fit in the mix.
That’s probably more true in communities that are very technologically aggressive, than for many of our local residents, but the fact is more people have smart phones now and the Web is everywhere.
Thus, many of the presentations and discussion at the conference had to do with that question: What next?
The reason I even mention this to you-all is because, as I’ve also stated in the past, this isn’t just my newspaper; it’s Sweet Home’s. Thus, although it’s my job to try to make The New Era the best and most economically viable institution I can, that last part needs to be a concern for local citizens.
Though I am a newspaper publisher, I think reality affirms that newspapers still play a critical role in our society. Nobody else does what we do.
I don’t want to be presumptuous, but despite “media bias” that people complain about – sometimes justly, there remains a level of expertise and commitment to an ethical standard of fairness and accuracy in many newsrooms that you don’t find on blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other media – even TV and, particularly, talk radio.
In most cases, nobody who is trying to be fair is sitting through local government meetings – City Council, School Board, district boards – letting you know what your elected officials are doing. Nobody else is asking for police reports to get the official version of what happened in that wreck on the highway. Nobody else – who’s not a close friend or relation – is making much of an attempt to follow up on what happened in the case of so-and-so, who got arrested for such-and-such. Nobody else is following that stinky smell of dirty politics or backroom deals.
We often can’t do as good a job as we’d like to, simply because of space and staff limitations, but we’re doing more than others are. I can hardly think of a radio station that offers local news any more.
The point is, newspapers are important because without the scrutiny and factual reporting they provide, where would you be? Is American government, as a whole, still honest enough and full enough of integrity to operate without some public scrutiny?
So I believe there is plenty of future for newspapers, but the trick is to figure out how to make it economically viable. For the last 250 years, newspapers have paid their bills with advertising. The price you pay for your subscription really only finances the cost of delivering the paper to your door.
But search engine salespeople calling businesses and aggressively hammering them to get with it and get their ads posted through its search engines, it’s hard to remind business owners right now that not everybody enjoys having information they’re not looking for thrust in their face every time they try to search the Internet. It’s good business for Google, but it will be interesting to see how all this plays out.
Meanwhile, newspapers are starting to charge for access to all the local reporting on their sites, and that’s a big topic of discussion. It has been free for so long, that readers assume it will always be that way. It can’t continue and so publishers everywhere are trying to figure out how to charge for the news product they have to invest in to produce.
I have mentioned on a number of occasions that we will eventually do the same thing. We have held off for the last couple of years simply because when we do it, we want to offer an improved product that will be better than subscribers are getting now. That takes time and effort and in the community newspaper business those are sometimes in short supply. But it’s coming. More on that in the near future, hopefully.
The advantage of using the Internet to serve our readers is that we can expand our coverage (such as all those court proceedings that can’t get in because we don’t have space, due to reduced advertising content.) We can offer new technology. As a weekly newspaper, we can instantly alert subscribers of breaking news and report on it. There’s a lot of potential in the Internet. We just have to make it work from a business standpoint so The New Era can maintain its role as watchdog and information source for the community.
One other result of The New Era at ONPA was our best finish ever in the annual Better Newspapers Competition, in which the state’s newspapers are judged by journalists in other states (Arizona this year). Judging in this kind of competition is always somewhat subjective, but apparently the reporters and editors down there liked what they saw, because we did well – 20 editorial awards and four advertising awards.
It’s good for our staff when these things happen because they work hard to make the newspaper happen each week and journalism can be a grind. So I’m happy for them.
But in the end, the judges whose opinion we really value most are you, our readers. This is your newspaper.