Ark. newspaper gambles on free iPads

By HANNAH GRABENSTEIN

Associated Press

HOPE, Ark.

Over a lunch of hamburger steaks, mashed potatoes and green beans, Walter Hussman delivered his pitch to the dozen or so attendees of the Hope, Ark. Rotary Club meeting. He promised that if they keep paying their current rate of $36 a month for subscription to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper, even though it will no longer be printed daily or delivered to their door, they’ll get a free iPad to view a digital version.

The daily digital replica of the state’s largest newspaper will be accessed with an easy-to-use app they can download on the tablet that the newspaper is distributing to subscribers.

Hussman, the newspaper’s publisher, said that by the end of the year, only the Sunday edition of the paper will be printed.

It’s a gamble Hussman feels compelled to take to sustain his newsroom of 106 employees and turn a profit, which the paper hasn’t done since 2017.

In March 2018, the paper began the experiment in Blytheville, a town of about 14,000 in the northeast corner of the state 155 miles from Little Rock, where the paper publishes. Each of the paper’s 200 subscribers was offered the iPad at the current print delivery rate, plus a personal training session to explain how to use the tablet, and print delivery stopped about two months later.

More than 70percent of the Blytheville subscribers converted to the digital version, a figure that, if replicated statewide, is enough for the paper to turn a profit, which Hussman expects will be in 2020. Including distribution of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which is not converting to iPad, the paper’s daily circulation was about 80,000 before the transition, said Larry Graham, vice president of circulation.

Hussman has said he’s willing to spend $12 million on the tablets, or about 36,400 iPads, which retail for $329. At the current lowest subscription rate of $34 a month, that would generate about $14.8 million in revenue per year, which Hussman said would turn a profit after expenses.

Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at Poynter, said two publications have tried similar experiments. In 2011, the Philadelphia Inquirer sold Android tablets for $100 if users signed up for a two-year, $9.99 monthly subscription, a program which Edmonds said was “very unsuccessful.” In 2013, the Montreal-based La Presse launched a free tablet app and discontinued daily printed editions three years later, though they’ve since become a non-profit.