A newspaper can succeed in Carthage

Every time I have written about GateHouse Media and how it destroys newspapers, there have been some people, many of them trolls I am sure, but also people who are tired of me singing the same song over and over asking me what would have worked to keep a community newspaper in Carthage.

Most of them seem to be of the opinion that it was a foregone conclusion that the Carthage Press had to go the way of the Edsel.

"You couldn't do any better," the critics are quick to say, possibly as much because they don't like me and want to irritate me, rather than having any deep feelings about the future of print journalism.

My answer to them- Yes, I could.

Before I go into the way a newspaper can succeed in Carthage (or Neosho or any similar-sized community), it is important to break down the reasons why the Press failed.

When I began working at the Press in 1990, the newspaper was a part of the Thomson chain and the newspaper made its money in the following ways:

-Subscriptions:

-Retail Sales

-Classified Advertising

-Display Advertising

-Legal Advertising

-Inserts

-Printing

At that time, the Press had a thriving print operation. In addition to six editions of our newspaper every week, we printed the Webb City Sentinel, its shopper the Wise Buyer, other newspapers and the high school newspapers for the entire area, including Joplin, Carl Junction and Webb City.



Our advertising staff, including Stewart Johnson, Sharon Kinman, Carol Strain and JoAnn Broyles, did not wait for advertisers to come through the door. They worked with their assigned businesses, visited them regularly and created spec ads that could help the advertisers to make more money. When new businesses opened in Carthage or the surrounding area, they would be visited by a Press salesman, usually before their first day of business.

Clyde Phillips' circulation department ran frequent promotions, managed home delivery and responded rapidly to every complaint. If one of our Carthage subscribers did not receive a paper, a member of the circulation staff, sometimes Clyde, would drive to that person's home and hand deliver it.

It was a business based on service. Unlike GateHouse Media and the worst of the newspaper chains, the Carthage Press under Thompson and in the days preceding Thomson's ownership, when it was locally owned, lived under the belief that you can't just expect people to support you and keep paying you money, you had to earn it.

That business model, though not perfect, was able to keep a newspaper publishing six days a week, making money and even having a news staff of eight people when I was first hired.

The changes began when Thomson, which did not own any other newspapers in this area, elected to sell the Press to American Publishing, the company that owned the Neosho Daily News.

It was the beginning of the dismantling of a thriving community newspaper in the name of corporate profits. It was also the beginning of the de-emphasizing of the community aspect of the Carthage Press.

Since Neosho had a brand new press, American Publishing determined that the Press would be printed there and our press would be sold. It wasn't long before the high school newspapers that Press Publisher Jim Farley had worked so hard to bring to Carthage, were dumped by Valerie Praytor, who was the Neosho Daily publisher at the time. The Neosho press was being kept busy with six editions weekly of both our paper and the Daily and the high school newspapers, while making a profit, were not making enough profit since the Daily would have had to pay overtime or add personnel.

That removed one source of Carthage Press income. The printing operation and those high school newspapers helped boost our profit, but they did not fit in with American Publishing's plan.

It was the first of many steps, thankfully most of which occurred long after Liberty Group Publishing, the American Publishing offshoot that owned the newspaper beginning in 1998, sent me packing.

Liberty Group Publishing, later renamed GateHouse Media, began a ruinous business plan of buying hundreds of newspapers, often paying far more than those papers were worth, with the whole idea they could make profits by combining services and cutting personnel.

Many of the newspapers that were sold to GateHouse were locally-owned, but who could blame the owners, often nearing retirement, for making sure their futures and the futures of their families were ensured by accepting GateHouse's purchase offers?

Other aspects of the Carthage Press operation were changed. The cuts did not just affect the news product, but the shortsighted company also began eliminating the people whose jobs were to make money.

The number of advertising sales people was cut to almost nothing and the way the remaining ones did their job was far different from the approach that was used when I first came to Carthage.

Spec ads were a thing of the past. Businesses would often go months without seeing a Press ad salesperson and some new businesses were never even given the opportunity to work newspapers into their advertising budgets.

Instead of ads that were designed to help retailers increase business, the advertising became a service for GateHouse Media. You owed it to the newspaper to buy salute ads for everything from special events to Arbor Day. One-shot advertisers were looked down upon and sales people were told to make sure they locked the advertisers into long-term contracts. It did not take long for Carthage businesses to realize those long-term contracts did not benefit anyone but the out-of-town ownership of their "local" newspaper and the ads grew fewer and fewer for years right up until the final edition was published Wednesday.

The Press, like nearly every other newspaper, lost much of its classified advertising to the internet and much legal advertising was farmed out to smaller county newspapers that charged lower rates.

As the cuts decimated news coverage, the newspaper retrenched its coverage area, for the most part eliminating areas like Jasper and Sarcoxie, which once had been strongholds for business and other areas, including Carterville, Webb City and Lamar, which were growing during the '90s. That cut down on the circulation somewhat, but still left it manageable.

There was no longer a publisher based in Carthage who could help sell the newspaper to the community. Decisions were made at Neosho and in later years often from further away. Business owners and other community leaders could not put a face to the person who was calling the shots with the Carthage Press and that makes a big difference.

The money was nearly all going out of town and the services had been cut to almost nothing.

The Carthage Press had no chance to survive.

A newspaper can succeed

Wednesday's edition may be the last time Carthage residents see a "hometown" newspaper. Numerous obstacles stand in the way of a startup succeeding and I cannot recall GateHouse selling any of the newspapers it has shut down, though it may have happened.

The price of newsprint is up and because of the clustering practices of GateHouse and other companies, the number of places where a newspaper can be printed are few and far between. As far as I know, if someone wants to publish a startup newspaper in this area, it would have to be printed by the Joplin Globe or in northwest Arkansas.

A startup newspaper is also going to have to battle a mindset that has grown over the past few years as the Press declined. Many people are no longer reading newspapers.

That being said, a newspaper can succeed if it emphasizes, comprehensive local news and service.

This is how it can be accomplished:

-If a publisher can work to convince the business community and the community at large of the benefits of a local newspaper and make it a community project, it will succeed.

-Ad salespeople need to make regular rounds at the businesses, prepared to listen to what the advertisers need and working on ads that can deliver it to them.

-The newspaper has to have a hyperlocal emphasis- Carthage and Jasper County government, schools, sports, the arts community, business, history, interesting local columnists writing about things that matter to the community and a strong local voice on its editorial page

-Involvement in the community- While reporters do not necessarily have to be members of organizations, they have to be willing to promote the activities of those organizations and churches and they have to know when things are going on that matter to the community. Is a fundraiser being held to help a family with medical expenses? Is the Maple Leaf Gospel Sing happening this evening?

-People have to get used to seeing their names in print again. Obituaries, births, weddings, engagements, anniversaries need to run in the paper free of charge. If there is an honor roll, run it. If the Carthage High School band is having a concert, get a copy of the program and make sure every name on that list makes it into the newspaper. Promote an event, cover an event, and do a follow-up on an event. That has always been the way community journalism works until companies like GateHouse forgot the meaning of the word community. How can you run those items free of charge if you want to make a profit?

You have to run those things free of charge.

You have to have community buy-in and this is one way to do it. Plus, you get people used to having a reason to buy a copy or to buy a subscription.

-The website for the newspaper offers an opportunity to provide breaking news between issues and just as important will serve as a community checklist. When and where are funerals taking place? What time does the chili feed at St. Ann's start?

In order for a Carthage newspaper to succeed, it has to become indispensable to the community. It has to show a respect for Carthage that GateHouse Media never had.

Don't tell the people of Carthage they can still get their news from the Neosho Daily.

Let the people of Carthage know they can get their local news from their local newspaper.

A newspaper can succeed in Carthage.