Bruce Frassinelli bfrassinelli@ptd.net
Newspaper Industry Continues to Struggle
‘New York state is fortunate so far, because there are just a few “news deserts,” but there is no question that coverage is merely a shell of its former vitality.’
BRUCE FRASSINELLI is the former publisher of The Palladium-Times. He served as a governor of the Rotary Club District 7150 (Central NY) from July 2001 to June 2002.
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More than one-quarter of all U.S. newspapers have shut down since 2004. Trend is expected to continue My Turn
lthough many newspaper publishers are reluctant to characterize how bad it is, the print business continues to deteriorate, and there does not appear to be many immediate solutions in sight to save this once incredibly healthy medium. Newspaper revenues dropped from $46.2 billion in 2002 to $22.1 billion in 2020, a 46.7% skid. We are hearing more frequently of “news deserts,” a term that has cropped up only recently in our vocabulary to describe an area of the United States without newspapers. In these areas, officials are held less accountable for what they do, and those who are uninformed in the public because of the lack of local information tend to be less concerned about voting and participating in the political process. When we trot out the statistics, the enormity of this problem comes into sharp focus: About 50% of counties in our nation have just one newspaper, often a weekly, and more than 6% of counties have no newspaper at all. More than one-quarter of all U.S. newspapers have shut down since 2004, while those that have survived have cut back on the reach of their circulation areas, reduced the number of days a week that they are home-delivering their product and trying to cut costs wherever they can to save a buck. Syracuse’s Post-Standard, for example, delivers to customers just three days a week, although the paper is available on newsstands seven days a week. Oswego’s Palladium-Times curtailed its six-day-a-week delivery to three days during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but restored two days in October 2020. Along with fewer publication days, newspapers have drastically reduced staff, which, of course, means fewer local news stories and much less coverage of
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important local news. For example, The Palladium-Times had the equivalent of 21 full-time employees prior to the pandemic; now it has just 13, but, according to Publisher Jeff Weigand, it is difficult to find employees to fill some of the job openings. He and other publishers also face another challenge: finding suppliers for basics for the production of the newspaper, such as newsprint, ink and plates, and the cost of these commodities is skyrocketing, just like everything else. New York state is fortunate so far, because there are just a few “news deserts,” but there is no question that coverage is merely a shell of its former vitality. On top of this, deadlines are becoming earlier meaning that customers are not getting nighttime sports scores, reports on local night municipal meetings and anything else that unfolds after about 7 p.m. To add to this disturbing situation, many chain newspapers are consolidating their printing operations, which means that deadlines will need to be even earlier because of the distance that delivery vehicles must travel with the published product. The Post-Standard, for example, announced earlier this year that it would not be printing the paper at its local Syracuse plant starting in August of this year. Instead, it is being printed at another Advance company paper in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This will mean a 4 hour and 15 minute trip under the best of conditions to cover the 250-mile distance on I-81. Anyone who has made this trip in winter knows how iffy the weather could make the drive. Such a distance increases the instances of late deliveries in addition to earlier deadlines. As many newspapers have transitioned from print to digital, they have been able to make up just a tiny fraction of the lost revenue through on-site advertising. Many are now using a paywall
