Doing a number on the media
You’re holding in your hand a rarity that happens only once every eight years on average. No, you won’t be able to make a fortune selling it to some collector. But it’s unusual all the same.
This week’s paper is issue No. 53 of Volume 156. Normally, we think of a year as having 52 weeks, not 53. But do the math. Divide 365 days by 7 days and you get 52 weeks with a remainder of one day. Add to that one day the extra day we get from leap year every fourth year (except in century years not evenly divisible by 400) and you can see why we occasionally need a 53rd issue.
Next week, our paper will be entering its 157th year. Accounting for occasional 53-week years, that means we’ve printed 8,139 consecutive issues — all without missing a single week.
We’ve printed through floods and blizzards, boom times and busts, pandemics and police raids. And we’ve emerged as Marion’s second oldest business — the oldest still providing the same service it did on its founding.
We’ve stared down multiple challenges, but they’ve been nothing compared to the drumbeat of doom now surrounding our industry.
Hundreds of newspapers nationwide have been done in not by changing technology but by greedy owners who don’t give a whit about the communities they supposedly serve.
People who hate newspapers’ role as public watchdogs are quick to grab onto this and create persistent myths that there’s no place in a modern world for the type of independent, community-focused journalism that good newspapers provide.
They write federal regulations that allow the Postal Service to raise rates we pay by a whopping 15% each and every year. They preach about hiring hucksters as social media influencers and offshore companies to spew spam calls, texts, emails, and flyers. They watch as locally owned companies are bought up and forced into one-size-fits-all operations that don’t let local managers do business with independent local media. They’ve been so successful at trying to silence the media that others actually begin to believe their myths.
Since the days of the penny press, newspapers have tried to be available to everyone, not just to the relative few who can afford to be informed. But organized reluctance by powers that be to underwrite the cost of gathering information has made it necessary to increase prices at least modestly.
Effective next week, a single copy of this paper will cost $1.50. It’s the first time we’ve increased single-copy prices in 28 years. Even with the increase, we’re passing along only half of what inflation would have dictated. A paper that cost $1 in 1997 should cost $2.02 today with inflation. Most other weeklies in the state charge $2, but we’ve tried to hold the line.
Back when we started charging $1 for a newspaper, you could buy a pound of ground beef for a penny less. Next time you’re at a food store, see how much ground beef you can get for our new price of $1.50. T-bones were on sale in 1997 for $2.99 a pound — three times what a newspaper cost. See how much of a T-bone you can get for three times our price these days.
Your best deal still will be a subscription. Starting next week, a local subscription will cost $65 — a savings of 25 cents a week or $13 a year over buying the paper on the newsstand.
Accounting for inflation since 1997, the subscription price should be $2.20 higher than that, but the difference is even bigger. We also have to account for postal rates increasing (and service decreasing) much faster than inflation during that period — to the point that it now costs us more to mail papers than it does to print them.
We don’t want subscribers to have to pay for the full cost of gathering and presenting the news each week. We also rely on advertisers. But retail advertising now pays for less than 37% of our costs — and we’re a very lean operation. I, for example, don’t take a paycheck or dividends. I’m 100% a volunteer.
It would be lovely if local businesses thought of their ads not just as something that sells goods or services — which ads definitely do — but also as a public service. Newspaper ads help sponsor content in the way PBS and NPR programming is underwritten.
A few still feel that way, but look around in the paper and see just who is NOT advertising these days. Then cast your eyes at such things as government social media feeds, filled with nothing but free commercials for the types of businesses that used to advertise.
Everyone sees us as someone to take advantage of. Sponsors of an upcoming Christmas event, for example, went to the city council Monday night to ask for $4,150 to pay for promoting their event. They asked for $925 for a billboard in Walton, $25 to create a web address, $500 for 1,000 flyers, $50 for 50 posters, $200 for three big schedule posters, $150 for 700 pocket schedules, $200 for Facebook postings, $300 to hire elves to hand out schedules, $500 to hire a petting zoo, $600 to hire camels, and $550 for a local “volunteer” to play music and provide prizes for a parade.
We’re in their plan — just not with any money allocated. For $180 a week for two weeks, they could have had a full-color, quarter-page ad that we would have designed for free. But all they want is a free “writeup/news story . . . focused on reaching community and visitors.” Apparently they believe we do reach the community and visitors. They just don’t want to pay us.
We want to make sure everyone has access to as much information as possible. That’s part of our responsibility to democracy. But many powers-that-be don’t seem to care.
Regardless, we are telling you in advance about our price increases so you can lock in current low prices if you desire. It’s not exactly the type of business practice one would hear about on “Shark Tank” or the “Apprentice,” but it’s what a community-minded business like ours is willing to do to help its community.
We don’t want to have to beg for charity the way some newspapers and other media organizations have. But we do hope that our readers will encourage area businesses and government to help support democracy and invest in our community by advertising with our locally owned and operated business, which seeks nothing more than to keep democracy alive.
Otherwise, one of these days, Marion County will become one of those news “desserts” that people like to lament — and that some in power seem to hope for.
— ERIC MEYER