Newspaper Rebirth?

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The story below is from our March/April 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you! 

Local print publications have suffered significantly in recent years, giving rise to other forms of competition, especially from the internet. Can they survive?

Don Lorton, who lives in the rural Snow Creek section of Franklin County, has had so many problems with timely delivery of his newspaper that he thought an online subscription would be a good idea. Except: “They kept telling us ‘just get a digital subscription.’ Rural people don’t have very good internet options. That print edition was important to us. My first subscription was in college in 1983. I really miss it.”

And so it goes as one of the traditions of the American home appears to be breathing its last breath. There’s no need to go into the myriad reasons for the daily paper’s—The Roanoke Times in this region—demise because you know those, especially if you are or were a subscriber. The most asked question is “what comes next?” We are finding that plenty comes next, some of it is already here, and most of it is welcome.

While some print in the Roanoke Valley is not suffering the way The Times is with its dramatically decreased staff and page-count, its spotty delivery and its all-but-fatal loss of advertising revenue, the health of past years is elusive.

Local small-town and small-time newspapers, notably those owned by Mountain Media (Salem Times-Register, Fincastle Herald, Vinton Messenger and New Castle Record) continue to pump out relatively healthy sports sections and community news that has always been their forte. Their revenue seems stable as well, though Publisher Michael Showell (whose headquarters for the group of weeklies is in West Virginia) did not respond to requests for comment. The primary question for Mountain Media and anybody else who relies on a press is, “How long?” MM long-time sports editor Brian Hoffman, an iconic figure in the Valley and one of the reasons for the publications’ popularity, just turned 70.

What have risen recently in the growing void are two game-changing internet alternatives: Cardinal News, which is getting national attention for its non-profit, news-in-depth approach, and The Roanoke Rambler, a subscription-driven site that covers Roanoke the way a newspaper would. It is seriously limited because Henri Gendreau, a former Times reporter, is mostly doing it on his own, daily. He only gives a nodding glance to the prospect of his own burnout.  Gendreau insists his “mission is different” from that of other media, but admittedly, he wants “to be the people’s news source.”

So do they all.

People, Gendreau insists, “are thirsty for real stories, investigative journalism, what happened and why. We want to help fill some of those gaps.”

So does Cardinal, which is considerably bigger, wealthier and far more high-profile with its ground-breaking format and corporate financial support. Gendreau doesn’t want the corporate support; Cardinal seeks it. Cardinal has been hiring staffers and freelance contributors at an impressive rate and its reach goes all the way to the coal fields, Richmond and Northern Virginia, though the coverage area is primarily Southwest Virginia and Southside. The Times was once the star attraction in the far southwest with the first of its five daily editions. Those have shrunk to one daily edition and the deadlines are so early that getting news or sports that happen at night means waiting a full day.

NPR political reporter Mara Liasson, appearing at a Roanoke College event recently, said she likes the Cardinal model.  “Some [newspapers] are becoming non-profit,” she says, “but I am ambivalent to that. What I would prefer is for them to team up with the local NPR station to deliver local news.”

Cardinal editor Dwayne Yancey (former award-winning editorial page editor of The Times) defines his target audience thusly: The audience is “‘civically-engaged’—people who are interested in and care about their communities. We’ve built a statewide audience.”

Yancey emphasizes that “we assume our readers are getting their news from multiple sources, including their local daily. … Day in and day out, we’re trying to cover different stories for a different audience. For example, we’re not covering city councils or school boards or courts or public safety or games. We assume that local media, be it newspapers or TV stations, will continue to do that. Our goal is to do the big-picture stories they’re not doing. I’d make an offhand guess that 95% of the stories we’re doing are unique to us.”

Yancey and Cardinal co-founder/executive director Luanne Rife were stars with The Times during their long tenures, but both thought the Cardinal venture could define the remainder of their careers. “I left because I saw an opportunity to help create something new with Cardinal News. It’s worked out far better than I envisioned. We’ve grown much faster than we anticipated,” says Yancey.

Rife says that she “left The Roanoke Times when the latest round of cutbacks meant that there would be little opportunity to report and write in-depth stories. The business, education and political reporting also were gutted.”

“When we created Cardinal News, we believed that our target audience would be … readers who missed in-depth reporting that provided insight into issues,” Rife continues. “We wanted to do the types of stories that legacy media abandoned, and readers missed. We [believe] this type of reporting is important for our communities to remain or to become vibrant, and that without independent, in-depth journalism, democracy suffers.”

Recently, The Times announced it was all-in on investigative reporting, creating several new positions meant “to drive public accountability journalism throughout [owner Lee Enterprises’] local news markets, including in the Roanoke and New River Valleys,” according to a press release.

Lee VP for local news Jason Adrians, who does not live in this area, was also quoted as saying, “The creation of our Public Service Journalism team strengthens our company’s commitment to investigative and data journalism, because it’s the work that can truly make a difference in the communities we serve. … We’re investing in local news talent and tools, premium reporting and storytelling, and the development of young journalists.”

(Sam Worthington, the regional president and director of sales and marketing in the Roanoke Valley for Lee, which has 77 newspapers, 26 in Virginia, cited corporate policy in declining to be interviewed for this story).

Even if The Times’ new journalists are Pulitzer caliber, they will make little difference if customers can’t get the newspaper, and that is one of the chief complaints of those wanting to subscribe. In a recent unofficial Facebook survey, we asked Facebookers if they received the daily paper and why? About 75% of the 100-plus who responded cited delivery difficulties as a prime concern. Price was second and the shrinking size of the daily third. There was considerable praise for the remaining Times journalists’ work.

Long-time Times employee Kevin Myatt, who wrote a popular weather column (and now writes it for Cardinal), refuses to criticize the paper, saying he refers to it as “Lee Enterprises doing business as The Roanoke Times.” He says that “The blame for costs, thin local coverage, and poor customer service lies squarely on rich executives reaping undeserved bonuses in Davenport, Iowa [Lee’s home base], and on Warren Buffett [owner BH Media] before that. All credit for anything praiseworthy or positive that pops up in the paper from time to time lies solely with the dedication and loyalty of the local staff overcoming the yoke laid upon them.”

In fact, local criticism rarely comes from former newsroom employees or those dedicated to subscribing to the paper.

Rife says Cardinal’s model is far different from what has existed here.

“We have chosen the path of a nonprofit and modeled our financial plan to be similar to that of public broadcasting [as Mara Liasson suggested]. We rely solely on donations from foundations, corporations and individuals. While we seek major funders, we also are growing a robust base of readers who contribute small amounts monthly.”

Yancey doesn’t believe newspapers can survive: “I don’t know when print will die—newspapers want to prolong that day for as long as possible because that’s where the revenue is—but eventually those readers will dwindle to a number where print is no longer economically feasible in many markets. The question then is what size online audience newspapers will have—and how much revenue [the audience] produces. That’s the central challenge for newspapers: Readers are going online, but newspaper revenue is getting vacuumed up by non-newspaper sites. That’s what’s cut their revenue and, with it, their staffs. Nonprofit sites such as ours are responding by creating an entirely different business model.”

Finding good reporters is a challenge, says Yancey. “As I recruit for our new reporting positions, I typically look to newspapers. I generally find two types of reporters: either people who have been there a long time (the lifers) or people at the very beginning of their careers. The middle has been hollowed out; those folks have left journalism, sometimes of their own volition, sometimes not.”

Recently three more newsroom veterans—reporter Alicia Peska, editorial page editor Mike Allen and sports columnist Aaron McFarling—took their leave. Also recently, Alabama lost three of its biggest papers: The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times and Mobile’s Press-Register.

“Big picture: we’re at the end of one era (print) and the beginning of another (online),” says Yancey. “Historically newspapers depended on advertising for 85% of their revenue. Today, newspapers nationally have only about 20% of the ad revenue they did in 2006. Where has it gone? Mostly to social media companies. Faced with such revenue declines, newspapers have no choice but to cut expenses, which means cutting staff. This is a permanent change in the news ecosystem.”

There’s hope for community newspapers, though. Radford University journalism professor Bill Kovarik, a former journalist who has written several books about the history of journalism, says, “Community newspapers will evolve, I think, into community media centers, and journalism schools will train people who can serve a variety of media needs while also reporting news about community issues. They’ll be able to set up livestreams in a matter of minutes while covering a council meeting. … 

“Some community media service work will make money, and some will entail educating volunteers. Given that, non-profits and cooperatives will probably be the best business models, rather than centrally owned media corporations that have not been able to adapt very well to the digital revolution.”

Ultimately, says Kovarik, news delivery is necessary. “The format is not really the point. Journalists working for print or web news organizations are the ones who spend time on serious civic issues, sit through city council meetings and investigate problems in government. Other formats … deliver emotional and visual content but require more equipment and afford less time for interviewing and writing. Both approaches to journalism are needed, but the loss of newspaper journalism has hurt many communities, since it is a real service to democracy.”

The story above is from our March/April 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!