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Among the near-constant doom and gloom reporting about the newspaper industry, every now and then comes a story that points out how smaller, community newspapers are bucking the trend.
Small town newspapers are faring better than most of their regional and national counterparts. For example, the total Sunday circ for newspapers with circulations less than 20,000 in the six-month period of October 2006 through March 2007, compared to the same six-month period a year ago, was down just 2.7 percent - compared to 4.6 percent for newspapers overall, writes MediaPost. The 12 leading metro dailies were down an average of 7 percent.
Some small-town papers are seeing circulation growth. The Dothan Eagle, in Houston County, Ala., saw daily circ rise 5 percent, with Sunday circ up 4 percent. The Macomb Daily in Mount Clemens, Mich., saw daily circ. soar 16 percent, with Sunday circ remaining essentially flat.
According to Ken Doctor, an analyst with Outsell Inc., one of the main reasons smaller market papers are doing better is because they have had more time to adapt to the internet, as they lag behind bigger metro areas in terms of broadband penetration. Too, larger markets have more competition in terms of popular content such as national sports, business news, and international news.
“…The front page of the [New York] Times is national and international news, and you can get a lot of it from another news source, in one form or another. But if you live in a small town and trash day moves from Tuesday to Thursday, who else is going to report that?” explains Dick Porter - CEO of Publishing Group of America, which publishes a number of newspaper-distributed magazines, including American Profile and Relish.
A year ago, 10 community newspaper companies and Suburban Newspapers of America launched a national advertising network as a way to make community newspaper buying easier for advertisers. “Media buyers have been telling us for years that our industry is difficult to buy; now we are removing that barrier,” Nancy Lane, president of SNA, said at the time.
The network is owned by ten newspaper companies and Suburban Newspapers of America. Full owners include: ASP Westward; American Community Newspapers; Community Newspaper Holdings; GateHouse Media; Schurz Communications; Sun-Times Media Group; and Suburban Newspapers Inc. (for profit subsidiary of SNA). Smaller market newspapers - Rust Communications, Packet Publications, Recorder Community Newspapers and Holden Landmark Corporation - were able to join via fractional ownership.
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