BROKEN BOW, Nebraska – When University of Kansas journalism professor Teri Finneman gives a lecture on the survival of national newspapers, she brings three items with her: a bottle of soda, a Twix bar and a copy of a newspaper.
The soda and candy bar cost more than twice as much as the newspaper, she explains, and take only seconds to produce, unlike the newspaper, which required dozens of hours of work from reporters, editors and press operators.
Teri Finnegan, professor of journalism at the University of Kansas. (Courtesy of Teri Finnegan)
In Broken Bow, for example, subscribers to the Custer County Chief paid 87 cents a week for local news. Finneman said that in North Dakota, her home state, the cost of one weekly newspaper had risen by one cent per year since 1930 to now 94 cents per edition.
“If you say it out loud, it’s insane,” the professor said. “Tell me another product on the market that costs that.”
Finneman, along with colleagues from universities in Colorado and Missouri, is on a crusade to save national weeklies at a time when 3,300 newspapers have closed in the United States over the past two decades. “News deserts” – areas without newspapers – are expanding, increasing the risk of a uniformed electorate and one more polarized by social media and talking heads.
That crusade brought the professor to this central Nebraska farming community last summer in an effort to revive the financial fortunes of the Chief, who has chronicled life in this corner of Nebraska since 1892.
Unfortunately, she said, the Chief, like many national newspapers, was still operating under a financial model that began in the 1800s. Back then, readers could buy a daily newspaper for a penny – it was called the ‘penny press’ – and advertisements for shops, jobs and services generated generous revenues to finance staff and production costs. That income has now largely fled to the internet.
Andrew Jackson was president at the time, Finneman points out, and a lot has changed in the newspaper industry – a sector that she believes needs to abandon its 19th century business model.
“The bread industry has evolved more in 200 years than the newspaper industry,” she says.
Price, subscriptions have increased
The formula Finneman followed to revive rural newspapers has worked elsewhere in recent years, and shows promise in Broken Bow. Six months after the local experiment started, subscriptions at Chief have increased, despite a more than 40% increase in the cost of an annual subscription.
Custer County Chief Executive Officer Donnis Hueftle-Bullock said she is encouraged by the community’s response to the changes adopted at the newspaper.
A professor at the University of Kansas has been working on a project to improve the prospects for the weekly newspaper in Broken Bow, Nebraska. (Paul Hammel/Nebraska Examiner)
“We want to make sure this article survives. We believe in this paper. We believe in the communities we write about,” she said.
“We want to make sure this item is viable for the next 20 to 30 years,” Hueftle-Bullock said.
The formula for Reviving Rural News seems simple: create a stronger connection between the newspaper and its community, adjust meeting coverage and add regular email newsletters to provide more timely news. Overall, you’re better off explaining why readers should pay more to produce a news product.
“The general public as a whole doesn’t understand what we do and why we do it,” Finneman said.
In Broken Bow, like similar revival projects at newspapers in Eudora, Kansas, and Harvey County, North Dakota, it starts with community outreach, through focus groups and surveys, asking residents what they want in the newspaper and what could be possible. missing.
Finneman said her team has discovered that few readers know the reporters and editors of their local newspaper, a connection that is critical to subscribers if they choose to pay more for a local newspaper.
Readers, she said, wanted more timely news updates and photos through “e-newsletters,” “event calendars” to keep abreast of local happenings, social engagement with reporters at events and at members-only “press club” meetings , fewer opinion pieces and more articles about the local population and their activities.
The bread industry has evolved more in 200 years than the newspaper industry.
– Teri Finneman, professor of journalism at Kansas
Finneman said her team’s research surprisingly found that younger people were more willing to donate to a newspaper if they knew it was in financial trouble. That, she said, goes against the approach of many newspapers, which aim to target their oldest, longest-running subscribers and leave out younger audiences as more interested in social media and cellphones.
Many millennials, she says, feel disconnected from the newspaper and need to be reached through social media and more digital products.
In rural revitalization projects in Kansas and North Dakota, regular “press club” meetings of subscribers brought new ideas and new sponsorship income, Finneman said. Events organized by newspapers were also successful, such as a cookie contest at several companies in Kansas and a “pasta fest” in North Dakota that encouraged local chefs to prepare inventive dishes.
“This makes the newspaper the center of the community again, like it used to be,” she says.
The Custer County Chief, with a circulation of 1,300, has a full-time staff of two and two part-timers, along with several “sports moms” who provide photos of sporting events from the nine high school programs in the Chief’s distribution area.
More coupons, local features
Hueftle-Bullock said that with such a small staff to organize a press club or special events, the Chief has postponed work on those efforts. But it has launched a very popular e-newsletter that promotes stories that will appear in the print edition, she said. The opinion page was placed further back in the newspaper and replaced on page 2 with more local stories.
The Custer County Chief in Broken Bow, Nebraska, has increased its prices and circulation over the past six months. (Paul Hammel/Nebraska Examiner)
A local focus group and survey found that subscribers wanted more coupons from local businesses, more articles about local hobbies and people, and some changes to the newspaper’s layout.
The Broken Bow experiment was launched in June with a front-page article in Finneman headlined, “You probably paid 87 cents for this newspaper. It’s not enough.” Updates on the experiment followed over the next six months.
The paper ultimately decided to raise the annual subscription price to $45 — not as high as Finneman said was justified, and less than the $3 per week it costs per newspaper to produce the Chief, but what the paper suspected readers would pay.
The result, according to Hueftle-Bullock, was a slight increase in subscribers and a sense of optimism.
Finneman said increasing the subscription price is essential for the survival of rural newspapers. Publishers, she said, must overcome the idea that readers will resist. The Kansas newspaper more than doubled its price but still retained 90% of its readers, she said, significantly increasing revenue.
“The supermarket won’t melt if they increase the price of bananas. They just raise prices,” Finneman said. “That’s exactly what you do to stay in business.”
Her team’s goal now is to expand the revived national newspaper model into the upper Midwest, where she has focused much of her work. In Kansas, she said she hopes at least a third of community newspapers will try the model in the coming years.
Finneman said her team will also focus future efforts on finding ways to improve salaries for community journalists and convince more young reporters to settle in rural areas.
“People really appreciate the local newspaper,” she says. “(But) education is critical.”
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