Community newspapers definitely have a future
My former Black Press colleague Bill Phillips writes a perceptive and interesting blog from his home base of Prince George.
Bill was editor of the Williams Lake Tribune (David Black's first newspaper) for many years and editorial director of what was once known as the Cariboo Press division of Black Press. He transferred to the Prince George Free Press in 2006 and edited that newspaper, which was sold to Bob Doull's Aberdeen Press about six years ago, until its closure in April, 2015. He wrote a great column about its closure, which can be found here.
A native of Fernie (one of my favourite places in B.C.), he has been in the community newspaper business for 30 years. He started at the Fernie Free Press, which his father Lloyd once edited.
In the light of all the negative journalism news over the past two weeks, he wrote an insightful blog post entitled "Last one out shut off the presses," which is well worth reading. I posted it on my Facebook page and it has prompted some interesting comments.
On reading all the thoughts expressed, I decided it might be worth expanding into a more detailed blog post.
Former Maple Ridge News and Tri-City News reporter Sandy Macdougall asked the following: "Years ago some federal government (I can't remember which one) talked about dealing with the concentration of media ownership in Canada and the threat it posed to a truly informed, democratic Canada. Whatever happened to that concept?"
This was my response: "There was the Davey report in the mid-70s and the Tom Kent commission in the early 1980s, set up after Thomson sold The Vancouver Sun to Southam and shut down the Ottawa Journal, while at the same time Southam killed the Winnipeg Tribune. Both took place under Pierre Trudeau.
"The issues that both inquiries dealt with are still relevant, but what has changed greatly is the varied ways that people can use to get information. Unfortunately, what often gets missed is that the old school news media, despite staff cuts and shutdowns, are often the bottom line originators of information that then ends up on Huffington Post or other websites. Most web-based publications (The Tyee is a notable exception) do little original reporting.There is no substitute for old-fashioned digging. That why I've long felt that locally-focused community newspapers will still have a role to play in gathering news and getting information out, long after most dailies have either shut down or gone tablet-only."
The Davey Report was actually issued in 1970 (earlier than I had thought) and the Kent Commission report came out in 1981. A link to both reports can be found at http://publications.gc.ca/Collection-R/LoPBdP/BP/prb9935-e.htm.
I've had a great career in community newspapers, starting in 1978, and I'm thankful to still be contributing today. I spent a good part of the last two days working from home on stories for the Abbotsford News, and it's just as rewarding to cover local news stories as it was 38 years ago.
The death of small dailies, such as the Nanaimo Daily News and Guelph Mercury, isn't surprising. Small dailies don't have the space to publish in-depth national or international coverage. What they offer on that front is easily available on radio, TV or in larger newspapers, to say nothing of the internet.
So what they can offer is local stories, as do community newspapers. But because of their limited staff and budgets and their (in my view, unnecessary) mandate to cover provincial, national and international news, their resources are spread way too thin.
In addition, their revenue base has diminished greatly. The cost of publishing a print newspaper five or six days a week is huge. The only way it can pay off with today's market conditions is if circulation revenue is reasonably high, and most small dailies in Canada are seeing their paid circulation rapidly diminish.
Community newspapers, on the other hand, whether free distribution or paid circulation, have more varied revenue sources - notably flyers, but also local retail advertising, municipal advertising, a small amount of classified advertising and a little bit of national advertising. Because there are numerous streams of revenue, the model is a stronger one. Some community newspaper companies, such as Black Press, also make a significant amount from commercial printing of dailies and other publications.
In addition to all that, there is much more demand for what community newspapers publish. Why? Their content isn't thinned down by non-local material that most readers already know about. Most of it cannot be found anywhere on the internet, except on those papers' own websites. If they are careful not to put it online too early, they won't be scooped by somebody else publishing their own material (usually without credit.)
My observations after judging a group of Ontario community newspapers for a general excellence award handed out by the Ontario Community Newspapers Association speak to what I believe are their strengths:
"I just completed judging a category of community newspapers for general excellence, for the Ontario Community Newspapers Association. There were 11 in the category, with nine owned by Metroland, a subsidiary of Torstar. Some are published in suburban areas, others in more rural, standalone towns. All 11 had extensive coverage of their communities, which in one case (Canadian Jewish News) is a non-geographic community. All had stories that likely cannot be found on any website (other than their own) and the quality of writing, photography, editorials and other work was almost uniformly excellent.
"Also of interest was the fact that several of the issues I judged contained investigative pieces which obviously required a great deal of time and energy, despite the fact that most of those newspapers probably have a news staff of no more than four or five people."
Community newspapers will continue to evolve and change. They won't be as profitable as they were 10 or 15 years ago, but they definitely have a future.
In the more distant future (maybe 10 years or so, maybe earlier), I think most will only publish print editions once a week. If there are enough varied revenue sources, they should be able to keep reporting staff near the current levels. Items that won't fit in the print edition can still be published daily, including breaking news and videos. They can offer much more community information on their websites, and some can likely be monetized. Connections to crowd funding projects offer some possibilities in that direction.
People want information more than ever. Community newspapers offer reliable information, gathered by talented reporters, editors and photographers, which people can use. The information they publish is about our own back yards, our neighbourhoods and our cities. This information has always been valuable, and I can't see Google, Facebook, YouTube, the Huffington Post or Vice bothering to gather it.
There's a reason that the Georgia Straight is likely the most successful print publication in the city of Vancouver. At its heart, it's a community newspaper.
If community newspapers can do it right, all those multi-billion dollar Silicon Valley outfits won't be stealing information from them, either.
Comments
Post a Comment