For some years now, many newspaper analysts, including me, have predicted that most daily newspapers would eventually cut back to one weekend print edition and go all-digital the rest of the week. Print advertising still has some value, and steering all of it into a big Saturday/Sunday paper would seem to be a smart way of maximizing a shrinking revenue stream.
Yet I don’t think any paper has taken that step. Some have cut back to two or three days a week. But large papers whose executives are rethinking print have tended to go whole hog.
Last year Advance Local shut its print papers in New Jersey, including The Star-Ledger of Newark, and steered subscribers toward its statewide digital news outlet, NJ.com. Now The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is taking the same step, even though Katie Robertson reports in The New York Times (gift link) that the AJC’s print edition is still profitable, and even though digital subscriptions have run well behind what management was hoping for.
The AJC, owned by Cox Enterprises, will shutter its print edition at the end of this year, although it will continue to offer an e-paper laid out like print as part of its digital offerings. Cox is in the midst of a $150 million effort to boost the AJC. Andrew Morse, the paper’s president and publisher, told Robertson: “The fact is, printing newspapers and putting them in trucks and driving them around and delivering them on people’s front stoops has not been the most effective way to distribute the news in a very long time.”
The fact-checker rates Morse’s statement as: true. The question, though, is what effect that’s going to have on the paper’s bottom line. Morse is hoping for 500,000 paid digital subscribers by the end of 2026, but the company told Robertson that it’s only reached 115,000 paid subscribers, of whom just 75,000 are digital-only.
“The AJC’s digital audience far surpasses that of print and has for some time,” writes AJC reporter J. Scott Trubey. “Ending print, however, will be the biggest change of Morse’s tenure and one that will likely be controversial, particularly among some of the AJC’s longest-tenured subscribers.”
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I think every story of this type needs a quick line about the owner to help put things in context. Specifically…
1. Is it a not-for-profit, a public-benefit, or a for-profit LLC/INC company?
2. If the latter, is it privately-held, or a publicly-traded company?
3. Is the owner a hedge fund like Alden?
AJC’s Cox is a privately-held for-profit, I believe, right? That means there’s at least a chance that this action…while probably the wrong decision…is at least being made by people who want to see the paper succeed.
Were it a nonprofit, I’d feel more strongly that’s the case. Were it publicly-traded, I’d feel far less strongly so. And if it’s a hedge-fund, I’d assume this action is just wildly self-destructive because that’s what hedge funds always do.
I did say that they’re in the midst of a $150 million program to boost the paper. Now, here’s a dilemma: Advance, Cox and Hearst are privately held newspaper chains that seem to be trying to do the right thing. But isn’t a paper owned by a hedge fund “privately held”?
I’ve wondered why more papers haven’t gone this route. For example, my last paper, the Greensboro News & Record, had a daily circ of about 110k weekdays when I joined it in 1987 (130k Sundays). Currently, its daily print circ. is 6,000 (plus 7,000 e-subscribers). I can’t imagine it’s still profitable, and yet it’s still printing seven days a week.