Corporate “community” newspapers usually fall short on community financial involvement

Four of the five newspapers where I have worked have been corporately owned. The current one is part of Granite Publications, which owns 20 mostly non-daily newspapers. Skipping the Today group in Dallas, family-owned by the two co-bosses struggling to rub two nickels together at times. I was at Jacksboro, Texas owned by behemoth MediaNews; Hobbs, N.M., owned by a company out of Lake Charles, La., that owned about 20-25 daily and non-daily newspapers, and Bonham, Texas, then owned by Indian Nation Publishing (not an Indian-owned company) which owned about the same number of papers. Both the Hobbs and Bonham owners had fairly significant non-newspaper investments and ownerships as well, i.e., motels, retail, etc.

None of these newspaper companies, at the level of these local newspapers, has invested back into the communities where I work any significant charitable contributions.

And, I know the usual arguments.

“We do that by running your charity’s press releases and pictures for free.”

“We do so by being community-focused.”

And on the business side:

“If we said yes to one charity, we’d have to say yes to all and we can’t afford that.”

On the first two points, while PR is nice, it’s no substitute for cold, hard cash.

On the next, I have several comments.

First, no you don’t. You can pick and choose where to contribute, even if that may involve local feelings.

Second, who says you can’t afford it? You can if you keep the donation small enough. And, the symbolism of donating something can be priceless as far as community marketing, especially if it’s a donation related to, say, Black History Month.

Third, it’s a fricking tax write-off. It partially pays for itself.

The owner of my current newspaper group can have publishers/ad managers meeting every year, PLUS a separate one for managing editors, at his deer lodge/ranch 200 miles away from some of the papers in the group, in part to give himself a nice tax write-off. Don’t tell me he can’t do the same with a budget for charitable contributions.

And, while newspaper owners may argue about shrinking profit margins, they still do a lot better than many other businesses. And the small-town “community” papers are the ones least affected by circulation declines in the industry.

How to make a tidy additional tax write-off for your newspaper group or yourself as owner

1. Own a newspaper company. For “fleshing” out the story, let’s just pretend the headquarters is in central Texas. Let’s also pretend you own 20 papers at this time, mainly weeklies, all except two generally in central Texas.

2. Own a ranch in west-central to southwest-central Texas. Again, to flesh things out, let’s pretend it’s near Junction. (We don’t have enough fleshing-out information to specify whether the anonymous Mr. You personally owns this ranch, or if it officially belongs to your rock-solid newspaper company.)

3. Have mandatory company-wide staff meetings.

4. Have these meetings not only for publishers (a reasonable idea), but also for managing editors, and even for ad sales managers. Again, just fleshing the story out.

5. Have them all at your nice ranch in Junction, since it’s the off-season from your deer lodge leases out here.

6. Since it does have that lodge as part of it, make sure the meetings cover parts of two days, so your guests can stay overnight.

7. Complete your various IRS forms, sit back and feel a bit better.

Small town publishers

To me, this is one of the best examples of “big fish, small pond,” as to why many people want to be small-town publishers.

Along with that, why does a corporate newspaper group have individual publishers over weeklies less than 50 miles apart?

Boy, the Dallas media landscape changes

From the new company, and its publisher for the Collin County newspapers that were formerly the Star Group, it looks like it’ll be raining shoppers in north suburban Dallas. Might not be raining quite so many paid newspapers in the future.

As for the Aussie group buying the Waxahachie Daily Light and its parent company… haven’t heard anything about them. Just remember that Rupert Murdock came from Australia, though.

Wonder what will happen with the People group; continued expansion, or some sort of sale there, too?

More Belo self-serve suck-up, in spades

The top story in the Guide Live section of the Jan. 6 Snooze (I REFUSE to link to it), complete with six-column photo, is all about WFAA’s new studio?

Give me a fucking break. Hell would have to freeze over and Bob Mong find some cojones before we see similar about any other network station.

Ed Bark, be glad you’re out of there.

Once again, the Snooze's website sucks

The Dallas Morning News had a story Jan. 4 about Toyota passing DaimlerChysler in 2006 U.S. sales and joining the “Big Three.”

Went to the Snooze website. To the Biz section. The story, an AP story, ain’t there. Did a search. Didn’t show the story.

Good new series on trucking in the News

Nice to see the News picking up with a second installment of stories on trucking and drivers' issues in the area.

I think it was a smart idea to set up a separate e-mail address for the series as well rather than readers with comments having to do a circular e-mail to half a dozen editors, graphic artists, etc.