INDUSTRY INSIGHT
Stubborn publishers won’t recover from COVID-19 wounds
Stubborn publishers won’t recover from COVID-19 wounds . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chris Krewson likens the economic fallout for local news organizations from COVID-19 to the health impact the virus itself has had on individuals. Those who were healthiest to begin with are most likely to survive. Those with compromised immune systems could emerge with permanent damage or not emerge at all.
Krewson is executive director of LION, a national nonprofit that supports the publishers of local independent online news sites. A few years ago, a significant portion of LION’S members were reliant almost completely on advertising. Most made a major push into subscriptions or membership programs.
That’s kept the lights on as local businesses shut down temporarily and stopped spending.
Publishers with a deep and healthy relationship with their communities have found their communities stepping up to help them, in the form of new subscriptions, and at hundreds of local news outlets across the country, donations above and beyond that support.
“Some will not survive this moment, and it pains me to say that. But many others will transform, innovate and triage their ways through this crisis,” Tim Franklin, head of the
Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University, said in an April report outlining what he described as a Covid-19-related “acceleration” of trends that local media was already experiencing.
Across the broader local news industry, there are some unique challenges:
First, the much-maligned big corporate chains that either face the pressures of crippling debt or hedge fund ownership looking to turn short-term profit, not save journalism. There’s Alden Global Capital’s Digital First Media/media
News Group, and the Tribune papers it now influences as a leading shareholder. And a Gannett-gatehouse buckling under a load of debt that looked impossible to service as soon as the ink dried on the company’s megamerger, and definitely didn’t take the possibility of broad economic collapse into consideration. These papers were weakened to begin with by years of newsroom cuts and short-term business practices. And their ownership has little instinct or wiggle room to do anything but cut further to get through this. There won’t be much left on the other side.
Local broadcasters were enjoying a presidential election year windfall (remember Michael Bloomberg’s campaign?) before COVID-19, and (with a few notable exceptions) ignoring the cord-cutting cliff that they’ll eventually have to confront, instead of investing heavily in digital and gaining share from newspapers. Now they’ve experienced a revenue dropoff more extreme than print, in some cases, and are laying people off instead of investing in future growth. Then, you have a startling number of small community daily and weekly newspapers that in 2020, do not even have a website, or whose digital presence consists only of a print replica edition. Not only did their entire revenue model collapse in March and April with the disappearance of local advertisers, so did store sales, and in some cases, the ability to even print or distribute their publication.
But finally, some wells of resilience: Although the growth of the big hedge fund-owned chains has received all the attention, most daily newspapers in this country are still familyowned and independent, and many are doing all the right things to invest in their communities and the future of local journalism. There are hundreds of LION online-only startups that have taken root in many communities. A fast-growing sector of nonprofit news outlets is seeing unprecedented investment from funders and incubators such as the American Journalism Project.
And stronger-thanever public media broadcasters that have started to invest in major digital local news outlets such as Laist.com.
To take the patient analogy a step further, it won’t end well for publishers who won’t admit they’re sick, won’t go to the doctor or won’t listen to the doctor’s advice.
Refusing to embrace digital or reader revenue. Ignoring best practices about reader engagement and audience development. Not applying for a grant from Facebook or Google because of some grudge, or a government payroll protection loan because you for some reason don’t view yourself as like other businesses. Not cutting print distribution days, when they are no longer profitable, until you end up cutting all the print days and going out of business.
That’s choosing your own death sentence. COVID-19 is just speeding it up.