To cut costs, newspapers cut days of print publication

This post was published in the Wilson Times Nov. 23, 2019.

If you like a good newspaper to linger over on a Saturday morning breakfast table, you might have to rearrange your table soon. McClatchy, which owns the Raleigh News & Observer, the Charlotte Observer, the Durham Morning Herald, and a total of 29 daily newspapers in 14 states, has announced it will stop publishing a Saturday print edition in the next few months.

For lovers of ink-on-paper news delivered to your door, this is the topper to a quarter-century trend of newspapers abandoning daily printed papers and putting profit-and-loss spreadsheets ahead of newspapers’ solemn duty to inform the public by reporting the news without bias or prejudgment. (Wilson readers are blessed to have a local daily that is not owned by a giant corporation that sees newspapers not as a solemn duty but as a potential profit stream.)

McClatchy Corporation has financial reason to drop days of publication, cut employment and trim investment in news reporting. On Oct. 8, the company reported a drop in stock price from $2.73 at close to 49 cents a week later.

McClatchy has been a train wreck for a long time. McClatchy, publisher of the Sacramento Bee since 1906, bought Knight Ridder, publisher of some of the most respected newspapers in the United States, including the Miami Herald and the aforementioned N.C. dailies. In March 2006, McClatchy paid $4.5 billion for Knight Ridder, which was known as one of the best newspaper chains, one that saw journalistic principles as an obligation. You’d be hard pressed to find a journalist on McClatchy’s corporate board.

Another worrisome newspaper development last week was the merger of Gannett with Gatehouse Media. Gannett, best known for USA Today, will be part of a conglomerate owning 250 newspapers. This degree of consolidation in news media once would have brought out anti-trust concerns, but now it’s just a routine business transaction.

On the cusp of the Great Recession, McClatchy overpaid for Knight Ridder and is still burdened with debt from that transaction. The once-powerful and profitable properties bought from Knight Ridder became unsellable in the depressed market and its sharp drop in newspaper advertising. The corporate office ordered layoffs and job consolidation to cut costs.

Just as in other newspapers, news employees were jettisoned to save money, making the newspapers less valuable to investors and readers as news coverage shrank. McClatchy consolidated jobs, such as publisher, which used to be a local position, a spokesman and business leader for each newspaper. McClatchy has already consolidated publisher and editorial positions in its North and South Carolina properties. Even these cuts and veering from traditional staffing were not enough to cover the rising debt.

So McClatchy has made the decision to “transition to digital,” meaning eliminating more costly print editions altogether. A number of major newspapers across the country have cut back on publication days. Dropping the Saturday print edition is a less drastic cut than some papers have taken. But the cuts are not over. It is apparent to my household, subscribers to the N&O for nearly 40 years, that print subscribers are expendable. When we went to renew our subscription, we found the three-month subscription cost about quadruple what an annual subscription cost a few years ago.

When I called to object to the price jump, I was expertly steered to a part-digital subscription. I now get the print edition Friday, Saturday and Sunday and have digital access all seven days. This hybrid plan for one year costs what print-only costs for three months.

The crisis in the newspaper business goes far beyond the “forget print” perspective at the N&O. Newspapers around the country are folding, leaving residents with no neutral resource about local government, crime, nonprofits, churches, jobs, industries, elections. The crisis in the loss of newspaper advertising is also a crisis in American traditions of vigorous public debate, informed voters and access to the ballot.

We are losing more than a day of print publication.