The Green Bay News Chronicle is closing its doors after more then a century of reporting on my favorite small town.
Over the past two decades the paper’s circulation continued to slip, and with no sign of improvement Gannett News pulled the plug on the paper. I’ve been reading the paper online for years. It’s a sad day for Green Bay, but it’s also a harbringer for newspaper’s future.
Every newspaper I worked at was losing subscribers and losing ad revenue as well. The News Chronicle isn’t the first small-town newspaper to close its doors and unfortantly will not be the last.
The next five to ten years will see a wave of small town newspapers closing shop and disappearing. I think that any daily paper with a circulation of less then 10,000 won’t exist in any meaningful form by 2015.
This is one reason why I decided to leave journalism. Before 9-11 happened I was one of five or six applicants at papers like The Daily Dispatch in Henderson, N.C. or The Item in Sumter, S.C. After 9-11 I was one 40 to 50 applicants at most newspapers.
As the recession that followed the terrorist attacks hit newspaper subscriptions, already not growing, started to freefall. I’ve heard figures that most newspapers lose three to five percent of their subscriber base a year.
I’ve heard a slew of reasons why people aren’t reading newspapers any more; the internet, a growing focus on state and national news, television news but the most scary fact is people aren’t reading any more.
Newspaper circulation, magazine sales, novels and comic books are all doing less and less business every year. The only thing that is up is internet use, and thankfully blog readership. Last month I had more readers then many small literary magazines.
It’s not that people aren’t reading the “Right” material any more, it’s that they aren’t reading at all.
Newspaper syndicates like Knight Ridder and Gannett aren’t in the business to make a ton of money, especially when they buy small town papers like the News Chronicle. A publisher told me once that if the paper breaks even it’s had a good year.
Small town newspapers are the eyes and ears of the local community. When I sat in a county council meeting or watched a trial I wasn’t just there drawing a paycheck. I was the advocate for the community, asking questions and looking over government’s shoulders.
If people don’t read, who’s going to be left to ask those questions?
Article comments
1 - Eric Berlin
I believe the downward trend on the number of print newspapers has been going on for decades, hasn't it? For example, I recall reading that at one point, New York City had a huge number of daily newspapers going. The fact that it still has four or five dwarfs that of other major cities.
People are still buying books in large numbers -- not sure where novels fall into the mix.
I'd have to say that the easy availability of news from both the Internet and cable television must have some further adverse effect on print papers, however. I grew up reading the daily paper over breakfast, but no more. I wake up every morning, flip on the computer, and sip coffee while checking e-mail, online news, and of course...
BlogCritics.org.
2 - Dave Nalle
Interestingly, our local small town paper is increasing in circulation and page count. They cover local news that no one else covers, and are in a much smaller category than the one in this article, but they seem to have a growing market niche.
Dave
3 - Tan Hoang
We had a small independent newspaper in my city that was free and depended on advertising. It got really big, but left after a year where circulation grew to 100,000. It was more an ownership issue than lack of readership.
4 - Matthew T. Sussman
It's a recession, but that will ultimately improve the quality of the media as a whole if there is less of it.
5 - badgervan
What you don't mention is the fact that the News-Chronicle was the liberal paper, the Press-Gazette the Gannett owned conservative paper in town. Not long ago, Gannett bought the Chronicle, and I knew it wasn't long for this world. So now we, like so many other Gannett-controlled cities and towns, have one paper - and that paper has a cleverly conservative slant on all ( ex. - what I would consider front page news is, most of the time, hidden in the rear of the paper, surrrounded by ads, and greatly reduced in size and scope ).
By the way, this email is coming from my hometown of Green Bay. We might be considered a small city, but I wouldn't call Green Bay a "small town".
6 - Dave Nalle
The Gannett chain went conservative? I thought they were sort of middle of the road pro-business, socially liberal.
Dave
7 - Matt Schafer
Okay, sorry Green Bay is a small city, and a rather nice one.
8 - Ray Barrington
I don't know that this closing is a harbinger of anything, except that you need money to run a newspaper and monopolies make more money. I was news editor of the N-C. Our paper was started as a strike paper against the Press-Gazette. Our editorials may have been a bit more liberal but both sides said we played news straight, and we endorsed both GOP and Democrats last fall. It was more a case of a chronically underfunded paper being bought and closed by its competition. Thanks for the kind words. (found on Google news)
9 - mike hollihan
The New York numbers you were looking for were, in the 1930's and 1940's New York City had something like 42 regularly produced newspapers.
10 - Eric Berlin
Wow -- that's great info, Mike, thanks.