Right in the centre - Keeping it all going
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- Published on Thursday, October 8, 2015
By Ken Waddell
The Neepawa Banner
Every week it seems we get a report from somewhere about a newspaper closing. Closing a paper is much different than selling a paper. As most readers know, The Neepawa Banner recently bought out the Neepawa Press. Most of the closures could have been avoided.
The reasons given have become very predictable. The reasons cover a limited range such as shrinking markets, shifting reader demographics, technology advances and a few others.
To me, the reasons ring hollow. In many markets, such as the larger towns and cities, you can’t say the population is smaller because it’s not. Cities, and some towns are growing. So a shrinking population can’t be used as a reason when the population is actually growing. The markets aren’t shrinking either as people are spending far more money than they have before.
There have been technology advances but that has been a good thing for newspapers. I have worked many, many hours cleaning out the old Neepawa Press building and when I look over the old equipment and the old technology I am forever grateful for all the new technology. No more darkrooms. The Press had two, one for photos and one for making the negatives to make the aluminium plates to run on the printing press. Today, we have digital cameras and digital printing. All the grease, grime and chemicals are gone.
The main problem for newspapers today is that they have strayed from their name. A newspaper has to have two things. It has to have “news” and it is printed on “paper”. Certainly the digital and the web versions are great and have their place but the good old paper copy is still the foundation. It carries the news, provides the certifiable record, carries the ads and flyers. It is completely portable and transferable. It’s a permanent, readily accessible record of the news in a community.
Ah, there’s the key word, community. A newspaper has to serve a community, an area of common interest or in some cases, a group with common interest. Some papers serve a certain group of people even though they don’t live in a certain geographic area. However, most papers serve a geographic community.
In order to be a newspaper and serve a community, it has to contain news about that community. When you pick up a paper and you can’t immediately tell which community it is serving, you know the paper has drifted away from its purpose. If all it contains is stuff you saw last night on the internet about some place far away, then the newspaper is drifting away from its mandate.
The Brandon Sun should report on Brandon area stuff, the Winnipeg Free Press should report on Winnipeg and region stuff. So it is with the Neepawa Banner, The Neepawa Press or the Rivers Banner.They should be reporting on things that pertain to their market area.
There’s another key word, market. A newspaper has to decide what its market is. We regularly publish maps showing our respective market areas. A newspaper can’t be all things to all people but it should try and be many things to all people in its market area. Defining the market area and sticking to it is the only way a paper will survive and maybe thrive.
Our three papers have clearly defined market areas and we stick to them. It would be easy to crank up the printing presses and print more papers. It would be easy to make up some more bundles and ship them to the Post Office. That’s the easy part. Paying for it all is the harder part. Our three papers are funded almost exclusively by advertising and flyers so defining our markets is critical to profitability.
Yes, there’s another key word. A newspaper has to be profitable. It doesn’t have to make gobs of money but it has to make enough to pay the 10 full time staff, the 7 part time staff, the rent, the heat, the hydro, the postage and the printing and a long list of smaller items. Oh yes, and the banker. They like to get paid too.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again, thank you to all our readers and advertisers.
