Smaller U.S. newspapers remain successful

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Newspapers are hurting all over the United States, but the pain is less severe at small publications such as The Blackshear Times in Georgia.

The weekly newspaper fills an information vacuum in a county of 17,000 people who live about 75 miles from the closest metropolitan market, in Jacksonville, Fla. That has made it easier for The Times to hold on to its 3,500 subscribers and keep its revenue stable in a recession that’s ravaging much of the newspaper industry.

“CNN is not coming to my town to cover the news, and there aren’t a whole lot of bloggers here either,” said Robert M. Williams Jr., The Times’ editor and publisher. “Community newspapers are still a great investment because we provide something you can’t get anywhere else.”

The scarcity of other media in small- and medium-sized cities has helped shield hundreds of newspapers from the upheaval that’s causing dailies in big cities to shrink in size and scope as their print circulations and advertising sales decline.

Less competition means the print editions and Web sites of smaller newspapers remain the focal points for finding out what’s happening in their coverage areas.

In contrast, large newspapers carry more national news, as well as local, and have many competitors, including Web sites and television and radio stations. They report much of the news the day before printed newspapers reach homes and newsstands. Large newspapers’ Web sites also provide the news for free a day ahead of print editions.

Perhaps even more important, newspapers in smaller markets still haven’t lost a big chunk of their revenue to Craigslist and other online classified advertising alternatives that have become the bane of large newspapers.

In 2000, classified advertising accounted for nearly $20 billion, or about 40 percent, of the U.S. newspaper industry’s revenue. In 2008, classified ads in U.S. newspapers had dwindled to less than $10 billion, or about one-quarter of the industry’s revenue. (Subscription and single-copy sales traditionally contribute just 20 percent to 30 percent of newspapers’ revenue.)

Smaller newspapers have been defying the ominous trend, based on a recent study of the finances at 125 U.S. newspapers of various sizes by the Inland Press Association, a trade group.

The classified ad revenue among daily newspapers with circulations of less than 15,000 actually rose by an average of 23 percent in the five years ending in 2008, the study found.

Overall ad revenue for daily newspapers with less than 15,000 in circulation rose by an average of 2.5 percent in the same time frame. Meanwhile, ad revenue dropped 25 percent at daily newspapers with circulations greater than 80,000, according to Inland Press.

Smaller newspapers also have largely avoided the deep staff cuts made by the rest of the newspaper industry, which has eliminated more than 100,000 jobs since 2005. The Inland Press study found that daily newspapers with circulations of less than 50,000 were spending more on their newsrooms in 2008 than they were in 2004.

But if they’ve largely avoided the Internet’s impact on advertising and circulation, smaller newspapers have not been immune to the misery of the longest recession since World War II.

Nearly one-fifth of their collective revenue evaporated in the first quarter compared with the same time last year, according to one industry study.

“If it walks, talks or spits on the concrete in our area, we cover it,” said John D. Montgomery Jr., editor and publisher of The Purcell Register in Oklahoma. The weekly newspaper, based about 40 minutes south of Oklahoma City, had built up a circulation of about 5,000 by focusing on Purcell and four nearby towns with a combined population of about 17,000.