The founders of the Hernando Sun, Julie and Rocco Maglio, attended the America’s Newspapers Family Owner’s Meeting in Charleston, S.C. last weekend. This is a chance for people who are in the newspaper business to exchange ideas and learn from other owners what has worked in their area.
Often, these local newspapers are the major source of well-written information about the community. They provide information about the officials running for office, the county budget, disasters happening in the community and more. They tell the stories of local businesses, building a connection between those businesses and the community.
The newspapers provide helpful context; for instance, government entities like to claim that because the tax rate went down, they lowered taxes. They might even claim, based on the lower tax rate, that for a home of average value, they reduced taxes by hundreds of dollars. This is misleading because even if the tax rate goes down, it is possible that the average individual homeowner will pay more in taxes. This is because their home value has risen higher than the tax rate was reduced.
One of the biggest challenges local newspapers are facing is that the newspaper brand is being tarnished by zombie local newspapers. These are newspapers that have been bought by large conglomerates, and they fire many of the staff, leaving only a skeleton crew of reporters. They then lay out and create content at their main location, often nowhere near the community they are reporting on. This disconnects the newspaper from the local community. The big conglomerates rely on savings created by these changes to outway the loss in ad revenue and subscribers so that the newspapers become profitable, but this hurts the newspaper industry as a whole.
Often, newspapers are denigrated because the print medium is becoming less popular. Many newspapers have closed their doors. The newspaper ad revenue in 2004 was more than double what it is today. In addition, newspapers have lost profitable areas such as classified ads to tech companies.
Newspapers still play an important role in the community. Studies have shown that areas that are covered by a local newspaper have a reduction in government corruption since a newspaper publicizes and contextualizes what is happening in the government, thus providing increased transparency. This transparency makes corruption more difficult.
Laws Disadvantage Newspapers
Tech companies have a major advantage over traditional newspapers. They are protected from libel by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This law states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” This law has been broadly interpreted as meaning that online services are not liable for third-party content on their platforms. This is the case, even if they moderate the content and decide what is published and what is not, as many of the social media platforms do today.
This law means that content on social media can be much edgier than what a newspaper can publish. Before publishing something, the newspaper needs to verify its accuracy. This means that newspapers must wait to publish an unverified rumor while it is all over social media. The social media companies still get to decide what is published and what is amplified.
Newspapers Today
At the America Newspaper’s Family Owners Meeting, newspapers from all over America were represented. A good portion of these newspapers are owned by families that made their fortune in newspapers before the industry’s recent struggles. Many of these families have diversified and are funding the newspapers from their fortune. Many of the remaining newspapers are in wealthy areas where the affluent citizens donate large sums and advertisers are willing to spend money to reach these wealthy readers.
Several of the newspapers are partnering with nonprofits, which see the benefits that newspapers bring to the community. Large grants are being given out to a few newspapers to support their coverage. Newspapers are also partnering with colleges and high schools to enhance student interest in journalism.
Newspapers Reinvented
The future of newspapers is still in flux. It seems that many are turning to community funding, but they will face challenges keeping their coverage independent. At the conference, Rob Curley of the Spokane Review spoke about getting community funds to supplement their newsroom and they will be using Creative Commons copyright for the content created with public funds. This way, the public will own the coverage that they fund. He also spoke about their book club, Northwest Passages, which has been highly successful.
The conference was an opportunity for family-owned newspapers to get together and share ideas. It was also a chance for participants to see the value that they provide to the community and become excited again about their passion.
