Kevin Sporici ‘20
The newspaper industry has significantly declined within the last couple decades, and many local papers may find themselves struggling to stay afloat. So much can be found online, and newspapers are becoming less of a reality. Arnie Shiva ‘20 says, “It doesn’t seem like physical newspapers are really relevant anymore because everything is online. News is much more accessible over the Internet.”
Today, the most successful online newspapers are big organizations that cover huge stories across the nation. However, though one can easily access a story about a national issue, it is becoming increasingly harder to find out what happens in our own communities. “We’re covering things that no one else has the resources to cover,” says Edward Condra, senior publisher for the Philadelphia area Digital First papers. “We cover the local government, the local schools, your local events. This type of reporting really only manifests itself in a local newspaper.”
According to an article from The Atlantic by Alexis C. Madrigal, “1,300 communities have completely lost local news coverage.” With the decline in local newspapers, many people are going unaware of what happens in their own neighborhoods and townships.
Local newspapers are facing a slew of issues, with the largest being a lack of revenue. “Readership is down for our print products,” explains Condra. “The digital business model doesn’t generate enough revenue. While digital is great, and it’s a new frontier, very few people are willing to pay for online subscriptions to our digital portals.” He continues, “The community needs to support local media, and we find that very few people are willing to pay for this information online. They think it should be free, and the only way we can pay our reporters is through support for the community.”
Many local newspapers are actually part of larger organizations that control multiple branches, and there is some debate as to how beneficial these news groups are to local papers. On one hand, they have saved some local papers from bankruptcy. Such is the case with the Reading Eagle. However, these newspaper groups are very profit-oriented and have also been cutting costs by outsourcing jobs and through massive layoffs. Digital First Media is one of these groups, and Delco Times and Mainline Times are just two of 56 local newspapers affiliated with it.
According to an article in The Intercept by Julie Reynolds, back in 2017, Digital First Media laid off about a quarter of their editorial staff in the Bay Area in California, outsourcing jobs to the Philippines as “part of a growing trend of shifting tasks such as proofreading, copy editing, and page design to ‘hubs’ that would save money.” Reynolds continues, “Through an outsourcing company called AffinityX, more than 40 California weekly newspapers once designed in Monrovia are now produced in Manila.
Before his teaching career at EA, Michael Letts, Head of Upper School, worked as a reporter and saw the effect of some of these issues first-hand. He explains, “When you work for a for-profit organization, the margins are incredibly thin. Print newspapers are dying. It doesn’t pay for the bread-and-butter of print publishing, which was advertisement. It is not a good investment and there are better places to advertise these days.”
A switch to non-profit funding would mean severing ties with large corporations or hedge funds that solely seek to siphon money from these newspapers. The Philadelphia Inquirer is perhaps the most notable non-profit in the area, which was donated to the Lenfest Foundation in 2016. However, though the newspaper no longer has any profit-seeking administrators pulling the strings, its financial issues are not completely resolved and it is not operated as a nonprofit but directed by one.
An article from Niemanlab.org by Christine Schmidt explains that “[In the summer of 2019], the company approached the union with not-great news: It needed 30 guild employees to take buyouts to avoid layoffs. In the midst of that process, Inquirer leadership sent out a staff memo warning that they were at risk of facing an “empty future” in five years if no changes were made.”
It seems that local newspapers are in trouble no matter what actions they take, non-profit or not. One can chalk it up to changing times. “It’s an industry that was, at one time, so profitable,” says Letts. Unless revenue increases, we may have to turn to other sources for news about our own communities.
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