Over a decade ago, my old hometown paper was downsizing, but my new hometown paper seemed to be doing okay. Over the past several years, my small town has apparently caught up with the big town trends.
The local paper has been struggling for years, going from 7 day delivery to 6 day delivery for subscribers and a minimal ad-filled paper on the seventh day for non-subscribers (TMC or Total Market Coverage was the product).
My kids delivered papers, up to three routes at once at times, but the TMC products which they had been getting paid for eventually just sort of stopped showing up at our house. At one point, one route wasn't getting it at all and the other was getting twice as much as we needed.
Then they moved to ditching Sunday for a big Saturday paper, so down to 5 delivery days per week.
Near the end of that, they did a big push for the Saturday-only subscription - a one day paper that was fairly inexpensive. A couple months later, they got rid of the one day subscription, so bumped everyone who had subscribed to it up to a regular subscription. Bait and switch.
Now they are delivering three days per week, through the mail. They claim there have been issues with finding enough carriers due to low unemployment. I think they lost good carriers due to a reduction in a quality newspaper and issues with getting them out on time to the carriers (which I suppose could be back to a low unemployment thing).
It's not a good day to be in the newspaper business. I don't have the solution for it. I'm a fan of the local interest story. I like community traditions and letters to the editor from local crazies. It used to be you paid for something that was scarce, because someone had to produce and deliver it to you. Now there is no physical production, and distribution is free electronically, so how do you still make enough money to create something no one is willing to pay for?
More and more of what is delivered to us electronically is in the hands of just a few massive media conglomerates, meaning the independent voice is being stifled. I have a feeling those free stories are being sold by someone who has something more than a nice story to tell.
