Of course they do, but whereas they used to be getting $20,000 for a full-page, full-color ad (and several of them), they now are getting ad dollars based on $6-$12/CPM. The model isn't sustainable. There is too much competition on the internet, whereas the Paper used to be THE source for news and information, above even TV and Radio. Now...not so much.

 

Bingo. Most of the big advertisers are now using digital instead newspaper advertising. Look at car dealers for example. Big dealers spent 100’s of thousands in the newspapers. But not anymore, because digital is such a better fit. Real Estate is the same way. Classified ads are dead. And the audience is all wrong for advertisers. It’s getting older and older. Throwing a few more stories about high school sports isn’t going to fix anything that’s wrong with the industry.

 

I will be dating myself here, but the Mike Field's Friday column of prep tidbits from around the state was my favorite weekly read.

I don't know about other markets but the framework to focus resources on more local stories is already in place in Cincinnati. There are community newspapers that are published weekly and distributed that focus more on local stories. Just tweak that a little bit and use the stories generated in both the local community paper and in the Enquirer. It doesn't seem that difficult or expensive to make that adjustment and I think it would pay off in revenue and more subscribers.

 

In the Lexington market do they have community newspapers that are linked to the Herald Leader?

I don't know about other markets but the framework to focus resources on more local stories is already in place in Cincinnati. There are community newspapers that are published weekly and distributed that focus more on local stories. Just tweak that a little bit and use the stories generated in both the local community paper and in the Enquirer. It doesn't seem that difficult or expensive to make that adjustment and I think it would pay off in revenue and more subscribers.

 

In the Lexington market do they have community newspapers that are linked to the Herald Leader?

 

You may get more subscribers. But it won’t be enough to bring back the advertisers, which is what really drives the revenue.

I will be dating myself here, but the Mike Field's Friday column of prep tidbits from around the state was my favorite weekly read.

 

I always enjoyed that as well. I miss that column.

You may get more subscribers. But it won’t be enough to bring back the advertisers, which is what really drives the revenue.

 

Subscribers including online subscribers. If that is where the revenue is going, why wouldn't the advertisers just shift the ad dollars to the online newspaper?

Subscribers including online subscribers. If that is where the revenue is going, why wouldn't the advertisers just shift the ad dollars to the online newspaper?

They have, en masse. However, again, they can't make nearly as much online revenue as they were making in print. So, ballpark, let's say that the Enquirer / Press / Recorders revenue is down 40% in the last 10 years. That means, as you well know, their expenses have to be down by the same. So they laid off all of Western Avenue when they moved their printing to Columbus, but that puts a huge cut in the newsroom as well. Plus, Gannett has made a zillion structural changes, but at the end of the day, where the Enquirer used to have an entire news room in KY and had Ryan Ernst (was terrific) covering KY prep sports, they just don't have the manpower for that any longer.

 

Believe me, there are smart people at Gannett thinking about this stuff all day, if there was a better model, or if they thought they could do something different and get more revenue / better results, they'd do it today.

Subscribers including online subscribers. If that is where the revenue is going, why wouldn't the advertisers just shift the ad dollars to the online newspaper?

 

Lots of reasons. One is audience, and other forms of digital advertising do a better job of reaching the people they want. The main problem is that even when you factor in the online audience, newspaper still don’t deliver the number of people they used to. People aren’t just not reading the physical version of the newspaper. They aren’t doing it digitally either. And coming from a guy who works in the advertising industry, trust me when I say there are tons of other companies doing a much better job digitally (advertising) than the newspaper companies. There’s much more to it and not nearly as simple as trading print advertising dollars for digital dollars.