Month: February 2021

The Telegram & Gazette hardens its paywall

The Telegram & Gazette of Worcester is hardening its paywall. Currently you can access seven stories a month before you are asked to pay. Now the T&G, as well as other Gannett papers, is going to remove “investigative stories, political commentary, sports analysis and other content found only on telegram.com.” More routine stories and public-safety coverage will remain within the seven-story allotment.

Look, I get it. But what I don’t like about this is that there are those of us who might need to download two or three stories a year from various papers around the country. Last year, I actually took out a subscription to an out-of-state paper for a month — and then had to call several times so I could cancel it after the reporting project I was working on was done.

I’ve long thought papers ought to be flexible enough to charge for $1 an article or to sell day passes to people for whom a monthly digital subscription doesn’t make sense. But I’ve been told it’s not cost-effective, as it would be difficult to set up and could take away from subscription sales.

I also hope that whatever extra money the company pulls in will be used for journalism and not to service Gannett’s massive debt.

A chain of 14 weeklies in New Jersey will convert to nonprofit ownership

Bernardsville, N.J. Photo (cc) 2012 by Doug Kerr.

I love this. A small chain of 14 weekly papers in north central New Jersey is converting to nonprofit ownership. The New Jersey Hills Media Group will work with the Corporation for New Jersey Local Media in order to make the transition — and will immediately embark on a fundraising drive with a goal of $500,000. Co-publisher and business manager Steve Parker explains the move this way:

Our family has served as stewards of these newspapers for 66 years, and we are pleased that a nonprofit group based in our communities has come forward to ensure that they will continue their mission of community journalism far into the future.

The papers — some of which are more than 100 years old — serve 52 communities in Morris, Somerset, Essex and Hunterdon counties.

According to the announcement, the chain might become the largest nonprofit group of weeklies in the country. Among large daily papers, The Salt Lake Tribune has converted to nonprofit status, while there are a handful of for-profit papers owned by nonprofit organizations — a list that includes The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Tampa Bay Times, the New Hampshire Union Leader and The Day of New London, Connecticut. And, of course, public radio stations are nonprofit news organizations.

You sometimes hear that nonprofit ownership doesn’t solve all the problems faced by shrinking newspapers, since they still have to balance the books. That’s true. But it solves a lot of the problems. Tax-exempt status and ownership by people invested in the community rather than by corporate chains and hedge funds go along way toward ensuring the future of local news.