How do you run a daily paper without an AP wire?

And, I'm not talking a five-day daily, where that wouldn't be that hard.

I'm talking six- and seven-day dailies, where it would be, unless you tighten page count, drop a day of the week or both.

Had an interview recently to be ME of a six-day. (As of the time of this blog post, I don't know where I stand at on getting close to the finish line, should I want to be there, either.) Keeping this semi-anonymous on the company, it is not a big one, but its stable includes one seven-day daily, one that ... sounds like it's now six-day and is being delivered by USPS, interestingly) and five or six other six-day dailies, all 3,000 circ or above.

And, company policy is to can the AP wire. Not as in "somebody," but "we're doing it." Related to that is the usual "digital first" etc.

But, they don't have a separate online-only subscription. I know a lot of smaller dailies do a forced combo buy of print plus digital but if you're really digital first, that itself is bullshit.

So, do you cut a day a week? Same sked but cut two pages a day? IMO, yes, that second option at a minimum. Filling 12-14 pages in a county of less than 50K without a wire and typical smaller six-day editorial staff? Uhhhhhh ...

There are ways around this. One can either cut two pages a day, or one day a week. I speak from personal knowledge.

My current six-day baby is in a town 3/4 the size and a county 4/5 the size of the one at which I interviewed. At my previous semiweekly, the nearest daily was a small seven-day in a town and county both half again as big as Mystery Paper.

My current six-day runs 10 pages on weekdays. On average, 1/2-3/4 a page a day of news, maybe a bit more, and 1/4-1/2 of sports is wire. That seven-day, to my best memory, usually ran 12 on Mondays, 14-16 the next four and Saturdays. It ran one full page or bit more a day of news wire and probably 1/2-3/4 day of sports wire.

So, yes, unless one wants to use cheapie brief sites like State Point, or canned product-placement copy from a place like NAPS, or third, hope your state extension office has plenty of non-ag consumer news, etc., cutting two pages a day is ... a no-brainer.

BUT ... even though it's a double no-brainer with Trump's ongoing tariffs on Canadian newsprint, the company ain't doing it. And, as ppl in the biz know, staff writers are hourly, not salary, and corporate yells about overtime. So, the managing editor is the shit dumping grounds then. Especially when combined with me inquiring about the adhole percentage and I was given an answer about what their target percentage is, not what they actually do. Now, ad sales are ultimately a publisher and ad manager issue, but ... if it's easier to hit a 40 percent target with the page cutting, and even exceed it, again, it sounds like a no-brainer.

It's an additional no-brainer as the Trump tariffs give you the perfect excuse for whacking both the wire and the two extra pages. Write a customer note like this:

Dear Mystery Paper readers:
Due to the ongoing tariffs against Canadian newsprint paper, which makes up about 80 percent of what we use, we have come to some hard decisions.

The best way for us to address this financially is to reduce our papers by two pages a day. The easiest way to do this without affecting local content is to drop our Associated Press membership.

Voila.

Now, that said, if your state press association doesn't have at least a weekly roundup column, while national wire might not be a biggie, some state news, especially in-depth state lege coverage while it's in session, to me is de rigeur. That's even more the case if you're running a seven-day daily and there's a bigger seven-day daily next county over.

Or, there's a third option, which is unethical, but is probably already being done somewhere, and could be filed under "turnabout is fair play." And, that is stealing AP news off its public website (not its download website for member newspapers). Or stealing if off a bigger newspaper, as long as it's not in your neighborhood, seven-day daily mentioned above.

The particular place in the presenting problem Mystery Paper is also a place in the West that was, briefly at least, "discovered." Presumably Californicated, by timelines.

It added about 50 percent to its population, in the first half of the previous decade, right before a housing problem hit LaLa Land before the rest of the nation.

Since then? Literally, in a dozen or so years, no growth. And average population seven years above the state average.

Are the Californicators going to be as interested in a paper without state wire? Or regional Western news? If they can read a header and first 100 words of local news on your website, you may lose them.

As for that seven-day daily that has a bigger one less than 100 miles away? If I were the bigger one, I might roll the dice and start trying to poach subscribers at the edge of the other paper's radius. If I really wanted to roll the dice, I might figure that other county is big enough for me to open a bureau (one-person) there. Since said smaller seven-day also owns a semiweekly to its west and your south, and only a semiweekly in a town of 20K, where bigger seven-day may already have a bureau ... I might add an ad person full-time in there, too. Maybe even a regional sectional 1x or 2x a week. Said smaller company also sees fit to run just a weekly in a town almost as big as the semiweekly town, same distance to the other side. If bigger seven-day pushed hard enough, it could probably blow up that whole house of cards.

And, that gets to one way you can get rid of the wire more easily — clustering. Not necessarily immediately next door, but increased clustering within a state. That lets you do a state-level version of Gannett's state-by-state daily news roundup.

Anyway, with papers bigger than Mystery Paper either narrowing their web on the pages, cutting pages or cutting staff because of the newsprint tariffs (which Congressional bills going nowhere won't stop if they're going nowhere), keeping the same page count without a wire is simply stupid.

But ... I doubt this company is that forward thinking, even though it's in a position to do so in one place.

Also, at least one paper in the chain doesn't include special sections for subscribers. No, really ...

All subscriptions may include up to six premium issues per year. For each premium issue, your account balance will be charged an additional fee of $2 in the billing period when the section publishes. This will result in shortening the length of your billing period. …  These (listed but deleted by me) months will have the effect of reducing the length of delivery service otherwise covered by your payment. Months are subject to change without notice. You may choose to opt-out of receiving premium issue content by calling xxxxxxxx

OK now.

Nickel and dime time.

It's not unethical, in that it's printed up front. But 3,000 subscribers x $2 x four quarters a year? $25,000 or so out of what should be, oh, $1.25 million gross revenue easy? Three percent is not nothing, but it's not a lot.  Throw in the progress issue and the city/county guide issue free to subscribers and save your bookkeeper and circ staff some hassle if nothing else.

Otherwise, on the double no-brainer vs. reality? Let's just say I've visited Glassdoor as well. The answers I got, as mentioned in the italicized paragraph, didn't surprise me.

This might be a good point to refer you back to my MSM bingo, community newspapers division, blog post.

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That said, I wouldn't write this much about Mystery Paper if I didn't know something about Mystery Town. I do, and I also know something about Mountain/Intermountain West towns being discovered, even being full-blown Californicated.

Taos is a good, or bad, example of that. On a small city scale, arguably Fanta Se is, too.

That said, in Nuevo Mexico, I also know the other end of the stick. A decade or so, Silver City had the first nibbles of being "discovered" but that's all that happened. It was more rumors than reality and it continues to lose population. Maybe Californicators thought it was too isolated, though it's only 2 hours from Las Cruces. Maybe local civic fathers planted rumors to try to make reality happen.

Anyway, I've been through the mystery city before. Last time I was there was at the tail end of the Californication or whatever. As it was mid-Census, I didn't realize it had grown that much, though I did note the amount of traffic surprised me.

And, now, it's a puzzler. Why did the Californication stop? Was it entirely due to the housing bubble bursting? If so, why hasn't it restarted again, as it has in, say, Bend, Oregon?