For some, community newspapers are best bets

By Jennifer Johnson
Editor: Patrick Adams



Marisa Waldrop doesn’t watch CNN, listen to NPR or point her browser to any Web site to get her daily news.

Like many Americans, Waldrop is sticking close to home when it comes to choosing her newspaper.

“It’s what comes to my door,” said Waldrop, a Gainesville State pre-nursing major. “I like it because anything national that affects me is covered on a local-level."

Readers are investing their time in community newspapers because they provide information that they are unlikely to get anywhere else. Instead of filling their pages with information already available on the Internet, community newspapers are specializing their coverage, focusing on important events in their town or county.

"We’re what we call ‘hyper-local,’ so we don't cover anything outside the county line," said Walter Geiger, owner and publisher of the Herald-Gazette in Barnesville, Ga.

With a circulation of 5,000, the weekly has served as Barnesville's hometown newspaper since 1869. The Herald-Gazette posts two-paragraph teasers of every major story on their website, but restricts access to full-length articles and images to newspaper subscribers. It’s this business strategy that Geiger credits with his newspaper’s continued success.

“Large daily newspapers are getting their ass kicked because they’re giving away their content,” said Geiger.

His friend and former colleague John Greenman agrees — to an extent.

"I think that Walter Geiger's observation is influenced by timing," said Greenman, a former publisher of the Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus, Ga., and current journalism professor at Grady College at UGA. "A lot of the smaller newspapers began their Web sites later than the larger ones and learned from their perceived mistakes."

Since Jan. 13, when the Herald-Gazette's Web site became blog-oriented with comment fields, they’ve had 1.9 million page views.

"It has become more than a newspaper," said Geiger. "It's become a forum for grateful parents to thank ER staffs for taking care of their kid's broken leg or citizens to complain about potholes on their street."

Journalists are now finding more work at community newspapers than they are in the city, said Georgia Perimeter College journalism professor Col. (Ret.) Robert G. Knowles.

“Used to be large newspapers were a mecca for journalists escaping small-town newspapers,” said Knowles. “Now, because the big guys are failing so quickly, they’re running back to the one-stoplight towns to report on the Methodist Church’s bake sales.”

Even advertisers are recognizing the value in smaller newspaper markets. According to a survey by the Inland Press Association, advertising revenue in daily newspapers with a circulation of less than 15,000 rose by an average of 2.5 percent in 2008, while ad revenue dropped 25 percent at dailies with greater circulations.

"It’s a timing issue more than anything," said Greenman. “It will happen, but newspapers in smaller markets just haven’t yet been hit by the same kind of forces that the larger markets have been hit by.”

These forces include the consolidation of traditionally large advertisers like department stores and the rise in popularity of online sites for real estate, automobiles and jobs.

"If I’m an employer, I'm not going to advertise my job in Cumming, Ga. with [online sites] Monster or Career Builder when I'm really looking for a local person," said Greenman. “I’m going to go to my local newspaper.”

Citizens in smaller newspaper markets continue to place their trust in their hometown newspapers.

"I’ve always felt like they have my interests at heart," said Mary Quinn of Winterville, Ga., who reads the Athens Banner-Herald every day. "I don't feel that way when I pick up newspapers like the AJC [Atlanta Journal Constitution] or the Wall Street Journal."

As a kid growing up in Savannah, Geiger had an Atlanta Journal Constitution paper route and had read it all his life. Now that the newspaper has ceased home deliveries to his community, he’s stopped reading.

“They used to say that the AJC covered the Dixie like the dew,” said Geiger. “Now it’s like the ‘don’t.’”