Weathering the Storm

By: Rich Kane

Weathering the Storm

Mass layoffs! Plunging ad revenues! Fluctuating newsprint costs! Vanishing subscribers! Earthquakes, tornados, fires, floods and locusts!

We all know what’s been happening with newspapers, yet much of the gloom and doom we’ve heard involves the goings-on at large circulation dailies. So we wondered, what about the gay press, or alternative weeklies, or ethnic papers? How are niche news outlets faring amidst the tumult?

E&P chatted with a few of those editors and publishers and found that while they face the same challenges as their colleagues, they’ve also managed to stay alive and healthy. Read on, and find out how they’re doing it.

¡Hola! Arkansas

Little Rock, Ark.

Maura Lozano-Yancy was certainly in the right place at the right time.

In 2000, when she started the Little Rock-based weekly ¡Hola! Arkansas, there was no Spanish-language media in the state. The Latino population was 86,000. But by 2010, that number ballooned to 187,000. Due to undocumented immigration, that figure is estimated to be much higher.

Today, ¡Hola! Arkansas is a 15,000-circulation newspaper with a staff of 14 that has never had layoffs, according to Lozano-Yancy. It’s distributed in 50 cities and has robust advertising sales. A special Cinco de Mayo issue this year was fat with 51 ads spread out across three sections, a benchmark in a year that Lozano-Yancy said is on track to be her paper’s most profitable yet.

The paper is a bilingual publication, with articles in both Spanish and English, which Lozano-Yancy considers a smart business choice.

“If I had a Spanish-only paper, it would die, because the children who are born here grow up bilingual, they become part of this emerging market,” she said. “I thought that if I was going to be a part of it, my newspaper had to be a bridge between English and Spanish, and advertisers and readers have recognized that. Fourteen years ago when we started, there was nothing anywhere in two languages. Now you go to Lowe’s and see signs in English and Spanish.”

Lozano-Yancy said that one of the keys to ¡Hola! Arkansas’ success is maintaining an active presence in the community. The paper is a regular at multi-branded events like health fairs and business expos. A recent career fair it sponsored attracted 60 Spanish-language exhibitors. It helms a well-attended Día de los Muertos party each year at the Arkansas Zoo. It’s distributed in schools and doctor’s offices. And it cross-promotes with one of the local TV news outlets.

“We’re not just a newspaper, we build these partnerships, and that’s a big difference,” Lozano-Yancy said. “Advertisers, they call us all the time, and they want to know what they can do to reach the Hispanic market.”

Her brand will soon reach an even wider audience. In October, it was announced that Lozano-Yancy will take over two Telemundo affiliates in Little Rock and Fayetteville, part of her expansion of what’s evolved into the Hola Media Group.

“It’s really about innovation and not standing still, not being afraid of new things,” she said. “When I started in 2000, I think ours was one of the very first websites in Arkansas that had Spanish on it. And I remember when social media started coming up. I would mention email and people didn’t know what I was talking about.”

Windy City Times

Chicago, Ill.

When the economy tanked in 2008, Windy City Times publisher and executive editor Tracy Baim had to make some major decisions about her newspaper.

So she got rid of it.

The office, that is, not the paper. The entire staff of this 29-year-old biweekly covering Chicago’s gay community now works remotely, and Baim said things couldn’t be better.

“Going virtual is what’s kept us alive,” she said. “We cut 30 percent of our costs by doing that, and in six years, we’ve never missed a deadline or had a glitch. It’s actually made us more versatile during snow and bad weather.”

Thanks in part to the recovering economy, 2014 is shaping up to be one of Windy City Times’ most successful in recent years, Baim said. Local and national advertising is robust, and the June legalization of same-sex marriage in Illinois has also been beneficial for the paper, which has produced several ad-packed wedding guides and supplements.

Print circulation is 10,400, with an estimated 20,000 hard-copy readers. Page counts average 32 per issue, and range from a low of 24 to a high of 92 during big events like the annual Chicago gay pride parade, Baim said.

Some of Windy City Times’ revenue streams are old and reliable, like a popular biweekly bar and club guide, Nightspots, which has a run of 4,000 copies. The paper has also been doing event production, organizing the Windy City Gay Idol amateur singing competition each year, which Baim said is profitable. It also organized a recent job fair for homeless Chicago youth.

“We feel that being good citizens is part of being a good company, and our readers and advertisers see that and want to be associated with that,” she said.

For a newspaper with only a virtual office, you can bet it has a heavy Internet presence. It went online in 1994. Website traffic hits about 125,000 unique visitors each month. The paper’s YouTube channel streams plenty of original video content. Staffers produce engaging podcasts, and its Twitter and Facebook pages (14,500 followers, 12,200 likes) are updated throughout the day.

“The Internet has never been something we feared,” Baim said. “But I’m shocked at how many papers are not mobile-friendly at this point. They may have a website, but you can’t read it on your phone. That alone will help papers survive. You don’t have to have an app, but you need to be mobile-friendly.”

Still, Baim said print remains the paper’s bread and butter. “Print stands out. Online has so much noise that advertisers don’t get the response they want. Auto and pharmaceutical companies, they feel that print is the best way to go.”

The Seattle Medium

Seattle, Wash.

For Chris B. Bennett, co-owner and co-publisher of the Seattle Medium, which has covered the region’s African-American community since 1970, maintaining a successful newspaper has meant sticking with the basics: Getting out and talking to readers, and being a trustworthy news source.

“We have a good network in place where people are bringing us a lot of information, and we stay on top of that,” Bennett said. “We’ve built a reputation over the years. People will call us before they call 911 for a multitude of things. It’s a big responsibility.”

The weekly has seen heartier days in terms of employees—in the typesetting era, it once had a full-time staff of 50; now it numbers 15. Yet it’s still widely read, with a circulation of 13,500, said Bennett, and its served as the seed of the Seattle Medium Newspaper Group, which has expanded over the years to several other publications and radio stations in the Pacific Northwest.

“We’ve really focused on doing creative things locally,” Bennett said. “We’ve gotten into some niche areas that have helped us build our brand with younger demographics. We transitioned out of the sports coverage we were doing, like high schools, and concentrated instead on Little League and youth sports. That’s gotten a new generation interested in our publications.”

Profile pieces of community members doing noteworthy things have always been a staple of any newspaper’s feature well, but Bennett said he’s trying to increase the frequency of these and create space for them if there isn’t any for a particular issue. That may seem like a relatively minor detail for some large-circulation publishers, but it’s one Bennett said shouldn’t be forgotten.

“The brands of those daily papers were built on being a community publication first, and those publications are what people can touch and see. That’s part of what makes readers feel that newspapers really get their community.”

Bennett said the Medium has seen increases in circulation and distribution. Ad revenue is healthy. The paper’s website underwent a much-needed redesign last year and is now updated daily.

“The dailies have all their demographics moving over to digital, but that’s not the same issue we have. We still have many print readers. But the site redesign has been significant as far as helping us move forward. Now it’s nice, clean, and user-friendly. That’s important for any newspaper, but particularly for weeklies.”

Dayton City Paper

Dayton, Ohio

It was just a few years ago that Dayton City Paper, the city’s alternative weekly paper, was failing.

Then in 2012, it was purchased by Paul Noah, a local club promoter, who initiated a top-to-bottom overhaul. He hired a new staff and started handing his business card out around town, doing his own market research by asking people on the street what they thought of City Paper.

“They said they missed a syndicated astrology column, Free Will Astrology. I couldn’t get that back because the daily had it, but I found another astrology column, Sign Language. I brought in Life In Hell and News of the Weird. I brought back Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess column.”

Give the people what they want, and they’ll respond? Apparently so. When Noah took over, the paper’s circulation was 11,000. Now it’s 19,000. Advertising revenue has more than doubled, he said.

Editorial rules were also handed down by Noah, which meant a more hyperlocal focus. No more giving coverage to events in nearby cities like Columbus and Cincinnati. No more writing about TV or video games—instead, make sure City Paper readers are given reasons to go out and spend money at local businesses. Increase coverage of the city’s music scene. Make the cover images compelling.

“I have a 20-foot rule regarding our covers,” said Noah. “If you’re 20 feet away from one of our street boxes and don’t have a reason to walk over and get the paper, then it doesn’t need to be on the cover. I’ve killed cover stories that way.”

Muscogee Nation News

Okmulgee, Okla.

Osage News

Pawhuska, Okla.

Navajo Times

Window Rock, Ariz.

Many newspapers that primarily cover Native-American communities are partly funded by their governing tribes, so they’re not as dependent on ad sales, making them more economically stable than most big-city dailies.

Because of this, Muscogee Nation News editor Sterling Cosper said the staff of his 9,000-circulation Okmulgee, Okla. paper has expanded from three to six since he started in 2012. But that benefit is sometimes offset by a perception that many journalists would see as a severe conflict-of-interest issue.

“We go back and forth with the tribal government from time to time, but we assure our readers that we stick to the facts, and that we’re committed to try to get answers,” Cosper said. “Whenever we cover issues, we’re always worried about an assumed bias. Sometimes we wonder if the name of our paper means that our phone calls don’t get returned. It can be difficult convincing people that we report from all sides and perspectives.”

Shannon Shaw Duty, editor of the monthly Osage News in Pawhuska, Okla., said the tribal government pays for the paper’s printing and distribution, but a 2008 free press act protects the paper from interference.

“We have a shield law, and our tribal court has defined the Osage News as an independent business entity of the Osage Nation,” Duty said. “I believe our readers appreciate and trust the Osage News. I have found out that if you can produce news and information, including photos and social media sharing your readers can't find anywhere else, your readership will increase.”

Candace Begody edits the Navajo Times in Window Rock, Ariz., which receives zero funding from the tribal government and is entirely ad-supported. The weekly covers the 27,000 square mile Navajo Nation and employs a staff that includes six full-time reporters, two photographers, and correspondents based in New Mexico, Phoenix, and the East Coast.

“We don’t have reliable Internet, so a lot of our time and effort go into the print edition,” Begody said. “I believe about 24,000 people go out and buy it every Thursday, so I’m pretty confident when I say we’re doing very well. We’ve actually been hiring, we have two reporter openings right now.”

A year ago, the Times put up a paywall on its website, which Begody said has had some success.

“We used to offer a lot of stories for free, but the paywall has slowly increased our online readership. I think it’s made people see the value in what we do,” she said. “We know how much we have to work to get these stories, so we feel we should charge for it. Certain things are still free, and we’re not going to make people pay for breaking news online, but we want to encourage people to buy the paper.”

A five-person ad department is staying busy in an election year. Work has started on a website redesign, and Begody said she’s trying to make the front page layouts more compelling.

She’s particularly proud of a recently-completed two-year project, a series which profiled all 110 tribal government chapters, an up-close-and-personal look at what’s going on in each community, its history, and its people.

“Our reporter, she just talks to the community members, and she writes about how the issues of each chapter affect the whole Navajo nation,” Begody said. “That’s become a favorite for a lot of people. We understand the power that the newspaper has, and we don’t take it lightly.