‘St. Petersburg Times’ Satisfied with 20 Percent Margin

The St. Petersburg Times in Florida has been attracting increased attention lately for its innovative ownership, during a time when newspapers are mostly being made much of in the media for their lack of innovation.

Unlike most U.S. newspapers, the St. Petersburg Times is not part of a large, publicly held corporation. Rather it is controlled by a local, non-profit foundation dedicated to teaching and promoting journalism, writes The Financial Times. That’s a huge difference today as large media companies are putting pressure on newspapers to increase profits.

Under the owner, the Poynter Institute, the Times still must turn a sufficient profit to support itself and to send a dividend to the institute, but a main difference is that it is not trying to push profit margins beyond 20 percent, as its competitors who report to Wall Street are doing. When the Times reaches 20 percent margins, in fact, it views it as a warning that it is not investing enough in its core business.

The business model has drawn interest from newspapers in Alabama and New Hampshire. And a wealthy philanthropist in Los Angeles who has expressed in buying the Los Angeles Times has reached out to the folks in St. Petersburg to learn how they do business.

The Los Angeles Times itself has appointed a task force to explore options facing the newspaper industry and ways to gain readership.

However, such an approach as Poynter’s may not work for many other papers, according to the article: local ownership can lead to stagnation in management, for example. But the larger problem may be finding an owner, like Nelson Poynter who created the Poynter Institute, to forego a big payout and “essentially donate the paper to the community.”