RIP Bridgeport Index

The Bridgeport Index is closing, not because of a cheap corporate owner, but a family owner who didn't find, or maybe didn't look for, someone to take it over. On the other hand, it was thinner on ads than I recall Commerce being before I moved.

Throwing out two sports pages which had ads on the sides and might be sponsored, at least for USPS concerns, and not counting obits as I don't know if it had the circulation size to do them as paid, the rest of the paper? About 10 percent advertising on 10 pages. Counting the sports page ad inches but not the whole pages, it's at best 15 percent on 12 pages.

Cut two pages a week, maybe? Too late now, but, that should have been a decision long ago. Lots of fluff material, much of it non-local, were on those pages. The smaller of the two newspapers I currently edit runs 15-18 percent on three fewer pages, throwing out one sponsored sports page. Counting the sports ad, but not the whole page as sponsored, it's 20-22 percent on eight pages.

Also, either have a full website, and paywalled, rather than just a PDF of the front page, and nonpaywalled.

The real sad part is that Bridgeport serves a population area about the same as both of my newspapers combined and it has that small of an ad base, even with a population growing quickly. I'm guessing that's less on ownership than other things.

Even with Bridgeport's growth being sudden and recent, ad numbers shouldn't have been THAT much less than the Wise County Messenger, which is a semiweekly for the unfamiliar, running 16 pages or more both issues, and 30 percent or more on ads regularly. That includes at least one ad from a Bridgeport business that doesn't advertise in the Index.

Years ago, in Jacksboro, Bridgeport struck me as a sister city of sorts. J-boro had twin weeklies under one roof, each running, oh, 20-25 percent on eight pages? As a weekly now, it could be running the same 12 as Bridgeport, but on, say, 25 percent ads?

Or, here's a current comparison which may be a bit more fair than to the Wise County Messenger, which, as journos know, is a behemoth in its size class.

Nocona is a bit smaller than Bridgeport was pre-growth, is also not a county seat and probably has the same coverage area.