The local media ecosystem of the future must have a much bigger role for nonprofit media and philanthropy. We accept this reality in the worlds of education and health care. It’s time to embrace it for local journalism…
— from ‘We Want You: Journalism as National Service’ by Steven Waldman and Charles Sennott in The New York Times, 2019.
On May 3, reporter David Gilbert wrote up an article about a major transition among smaller newspapers here in Colorado.
Colorado Community Media, the company that produces two dozen newspapers around the Denver-area suburbs, has been acquired by a local and national partnership with the goal of building a sustainable business model for local news, its ownership announced on May 3.
Jerry and Ann Healey, the couple who built the company over the past decade, sold the network of papers that now spans eight counties and dozens of communities to a joint partnership between the National Trust for Local News, or NTLN, and The Colorado Sun.
The acquisition is the first for NTLN, a nascent nonprofit that seeks to leverage national foundation funding to buy and bolster local newspapers threatened by faltering business models and the encroachment of hedge funds and corporate conglomerates.
Of the 7,071 daily or weekly newspapers regularly published in the US, nearly all of them — 6,851 — have circulations of less than 50,000. To put the number “50,000” into context, Colorado’s largest newspaper — The Denver Post — has an average weekday circulation of about 416,000 and its website receives close to two million ‘page views’ each day. The Colorado Springs Gazette print version has a weekday circulation of about 93,000, and sees about 1 million website visits per month.
In 2017, when reporters Christopher Ali and Damian Radcliffe surveyed editors and reporters working for smaller newspapers for an article in the Columbia Journalism Review, they heard about staff cuts, difficulties with recruitment of young reporters, cynicism among the general public about “fake news” coming from newspapers, and a lack of interest in newspapers among the younger generations.
Nevertheless…
Despite cuts and job losses over the past decade, as a group our respondents were more upbeat about their future than perhaps might be expected…
The Colorado Sun — an online-only journal covering state-wide issues, and now part owner of the two dozen Colorado Community Media newspapers — was started by several journalists who left The Denver Post in 2018, following the acquisition of that newspaper by hedge fund Alden Global Capital, and subsequent layoffs among the news staff.
Alden Global now owns more than 200 newspapers, including The Denver Post, Orange County Register and The St. Paul Pioneer Press through its Digital First business, and is currently attempting to acquire the Chicago Tribune.
I’m not sure if the Denver Post has grown its readership, or its profit margin, since the hedge fund acquisition, but the Colorado Sun has been growing. From the news article by David Gilbert, noted above:
“Our business model is so simple it sounds naive,” said [Larry Ryckman, the editor and co-founder of the Colorado Sun]. “Treat readers with respect. Don’t scam them with clickbait, autoplay videos, or pop-up ads. Give them journalism worthy of their support. We’ve seen tremendous growth in readership and paying membership.”
“We started with 10 full-timers, and we’ll have 16 next month, and we’re aiming for 20 by midsummer,” he said. “We do have statewide ambitions, and our goal is to fill the gaps and do the stories others aren’t doing.”
Reportedly, Colorado Community Media will be operated as a public benefit corporation, meaning that, while it remains privately-owned, it has no obligation to maximize shareholder profits, and has the added responsibility of providing one of more specific social benefits as part of its corporate mission. Colorado is one of 35 US states that specifically allow the formation of “PBCs” — also known as B Corporations.
The Colorado Sun is one of more than two dozen news organizations that have been contributing articles and photography to the Colorado News Collaborative — COLab — and allowing certain news articles of general interest to be re-published by other COLab members, at no cost.
I can’t think of many non-governmental organizations that are currently sharing their primary product to “competitors”… free of charge.
Perhaps we can credit the inventors of the World Wide Web for this development?
Many of our existing US newspapers date back to the 1800s. (The Hartford Courant, founded in 1764, is the country’s oldest newspaper in continuous publication.) Along the way, the funding of these newspapers fell to advertisers and subscribers.
By the early 2000s, however, the impact of the Internet was being felt by local and national newspapers — cutting into both advertising and subscription revenue. Readership was dropping all across the country, and advertisers were finding that search-engine-driven behavior, and the mass aggregation of viewer data, made the Internet a more cost-effective advertising venue, especially for national and international companies. Advertiser found they could advertise directly to specific people interested in their products, rather than spending on the ‘scatter-shot’ advertising they got from newspaper ads.
But there was another aspect to the Internet that our challenged traditional ideas about news delivery. The World Wide Web has been originally developed by scientists with the specific intention of freely sharing technical information. This origin story led to an Internet culture of freely sharing not only technical information, but also product information, ideas, images, personal stories… and news.
The Pagosa Daily Post, for example, has been sharing news and opinions about our little community since 2004, completely free of charge. The low cost of the digital processes involved are only part of the reason why we’ve never charged the public to read the Daily Post. Another reason derives from the very nature of information sharing, overall, on the Internet.
This same ‘sharing’ attitude continues to provide us with ‘shared’ news coming from various other news outlets — most recently, through the Colorado News Collaborative. Like many journalists here in Colorado, we consider our work to be a form of “National Service”; a way to serve our local community with important information. And we are thankful that so many other journalists feel the same way.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.