Take Heed, Lee Enterprises

— McClatchy Co.said it filed for bankruptcy protection on Thursday, moving to reorganize as the newspaper publisher struggles to find ways to grow amid a fallout in traditional revenue sources.

— The publisher of the Miami Herald, the Kansas City Star and other well-known newspapers said it initiated a chapter 11 restructuring in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.

— McClatchy and other newspaper publishers focused on regional markets are grappling with the shift from print media to digital, a change that has undercut circulation and resulted in weaker print advertising.

— Daily average circulation across its newsrooms fell 24% during the first nine months of last year

— The Kansas City Star’s ‘problems’ are not mainly “the shift from print media to digital…”: source: a one time subscriber

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This story highlights the problems of McClatchy and its stable of newspapers. There’s no doubt that a major change in the ‘news absorbing’ habits of Americans has had a devastating impact on local newspapers. But as a lifelong devotee of the daily newspaper, I am deeply grieved by the passing of this great institution. And it is not only the older generation who regrets what has happened to the local daily newspaper.

When I was a resident of the Quad Cities, it was clear to me that the “evolution” of the daily, local newspaper was well underway with the Times. I had seen it in a number of other communities I have lived in over the past 3 decades or so.

With few exceptions, the newspaper Americans have awakened to each morning and enjoyed over breakfast has become much less a “news” paper and much more a liberal political pamphlet. Much of it is just a ‘rip and tear’ chronicle of what their wire service, in most cases, the leftist Associated Press, chooses in order to influence readers’ political views.

More and more the strongly biased wire services’ ideology has seeped into the views and writings of the papers’ editorial boards, reporters, and resident columnists.

When we moved to Kansas City, my wife and I hoped that the local newspaper, well-known nationally and much more a reputed journalistic standard than the QC Times, would restore the confidence and affection we’ve had for daily newspapers over a near lifetime.

It became apparent, however, that the ‘infection’ which has been destroying the genre, had very much spread to and grown rapidly in the Kansas City Star.

Always regarded as a liberal paper, yet one that sought some competent balance, the Star had really become, at best, little more than a pamphlet in support of the political views of the liberal, newly radical left Democratic Party.

After a couple of years, it was obvious to us that the Star had begun a ‘death spiral’. It was not a “newspaper”, as I noted, but a political pamphlet. Readership began a steep decline, the quality of local reporting declined as veteran, skilled reporters apparently retired or otherwise left, replaced by the latest graduates of the now severely corrupted journalism schools.

And so, with great reluctance and deep regret, we cancelled our subscription to The Star, no longer after decades, were we regular subscribers to a daily, local newspaper.

We learned since, however, that we were not alone. While the Star doesn’t publicize, or reveal, the extent of its decline in readership, just a quick inventory of our own immediate neighborhood revealed that, of 22 residences on our street, morning driveways revealed that a copy of the Star  lands daily on only one.

Every day we receive emails from the Star’s circulation dept. imploring us (after more than 3 years) to ‘come back’. Offers of “exciting new deals” that virtually have the paper delivered to our doorstep free if we will again subscribe. (I suspect any day, this paper WILL be delivered free if only to assure advertisers that it has a substantial circulation base.)

I believe the Star’s plight is repeated many times over in other communities. It seems the newspapers do not understand why their product is no longer sought by consumers of news. As the story on McClatchy’s (coming) demise suggests, “it’s because of the ‘decline of print media in favor of digital’ .

We believe that, while that may be a partial contributor, the main reason is that “the new journalism” seems aggressively seeking to alienate half or more of its readership base in order to advance its political and cultural values. The bias reflected in both its news coverage and its editorial page content is stifling.

Take heed, Lee Enterprises!       dlh

Note: related article about developments at Lee in a later post