"Journal News' Recalls the Past

By: Robert Neuwirth Less than three years after merging its 10 suburban New York dailies into a single newspaper, Gannett Co. Inc. has quietly brought some of its old titles back to life.

Ten months ago, the nation's largest newspaper company rolled out the 78-year-old flag of The Star of Peekskill. Then The Item, Port Chester's century-old banner, was revived. Most recently, readers have seen such venerable titles as The Times in Mamaroneck and The Standard-Star in New Rochelle reappear. All the revived papers are now tabloid weeklies.

The reappearance of the old titles comes as Audit Bureau of Circulations figures show that Gannett's combined Westchester-Rockland county paper, The Journal News, has been losing circulation in several of these key localities. In just two years after consolidation, daily circulation in Port Chester and Rye tumbled to 5,572 from 6,582, a 15% decline, while Sunday circulation dropped 9.4%. In Larchmont and Mamaroneck, daily circulation fell 13%, to 4,286 from 4,816, while Sunday circulation dropped 7.3%. In New Rochelle and Pelham, daily circulation slipped 8.2%, to 8,468 from 9,228, while Sunday circulation nudged up half a percent. For its entire market, The Journal News has been relatively stronger, with circulation declining 3.4% daily and 1.5% Sunday.

Journal News President and Publisher Gary F. Sherlock said there's no connection between launching the weeklies and the daily paper's local circulation woes. "The weeklies give us an opportunity to provide local content that we couldn't get into the daily," he said. "There wasn?t a connection between starting the weeklies and circulation losses." Still, Sherlock added that he hopes the weeklies will woo local readers back. "They build back some readership that we probably walked away from," he said.

Gannett's reclaimed banners, the new weeklies, are designed to have a somewhat softer tone than the daily -- covering what John Green, vice president for marketing of The Journal News, called, "the little celebrations of life, all that really good local, local news that we collect on a regular basis, but have been unable to put in the daily paper." They have their own writers and editors, advertising reps, and circulation operation. They are bundled inside The Journal News but also are sold separately (at 25 cents a copy) in racks and at newsstands. The company estimates that single-copy sales add 25% to circulation in the communities where they are distributed.

When Gannett first rolled out the weeklies, many local publishers feared the end was near.

"When I heard they were doing this, I was a nervous wreck," said Richard Abel, publisher of the weekly Westmore News in Port Chester (circulation 2,284 paid, 944 free). "I mean, come on, these are the big guys."

Abel runs a homegrown business. His father started the company 36 years ago. When Abel and his wife took over, they looked at the demographics and split the News into two editions -- one for downmarket Port Chester and another for ritzy Rye Brook. And Abel has continued to follow the demographics, creating America Latina, a monthly Spanish-language newspaper, when he saw that Port Chester had become 50% Hispanic.

Though he notes that his paper can't come close to Gannett on production values -- Gannett's weeklies offer full color on every page -- Abel suggests that Gannett's offerings are soft on news and light on advertising.

Because they are bundled into The Journal News as their primary means of circulation, the weeklies most often do not cover the big stories that appear in the daily paper. In addition, Abel said, Gannett will never steal his small-scale advertisers. That's because Gannett has concentrated on marketing classifieds in the weeklies as an add-on to advertisers who buy the full run of the daily paper. "They may have the deep pockets," Abel said, "but we?re here. We?ve been here. We know the people. We know the business. I think that makes a big difference."

Similarly, Maggie Klein, founder, publisher, and editor of the 9-year-old Pelham Weekly, said that Gannett's entry into the market has not hurt her at all. "So far, they haven't touched me. In fact, I've had more ads."

The fact that America's largest newspaper company rolled out these weeklies with a whimper instead of a bang has started local tongues wagging. Some observers suggest that Gannett clustered too tightly when it combined its 10 dailies into one title and is losing readership because The Journal News is not able to carry items from all the localities in the two counties it covers.

"Otherwise, why develop weeklies and insert them in your paper. Isn't it redundant?" asked Dee DelBello, whose Westfair Communications Inc. publishes the Westchester County Business Journal and The Sound Shore Review, which compete with Gannett (and Abel and Klein) in Port Chester, Rye, and Rye Brook.

But Gannett doesn't think so. John Green said it has studied bringing back several other old titles as weeklies -- including the Herald Statesman in Yonkers. But Gary Sherlock refused to reveal future strategies, saying only that he's looking at a variety of strategies to build market share.

For his part, Richard Abel no longer sees doom and gloom in the competition with Gannett's weeklies. He now thinks the behemoth and the bantamweight weeklies can co-exist. "If you want to buy Westchester County, you've got to go to Gannett," said Abel. "But local merchants don't need the whole county. They're still going to go to the weeklies."