KERA to buy dead carcass of Denton Record-Chronicle

Or, the Denton Wrecked-Chronic, per my inimitable style of naming newspapers.

WHY is KERA buying it?

It's a shell of itself, and as I said on Twitter, it was a shell of itself pre-COVID.

I live north of Denton, and pre-COVID, you couldn't find it here. You could find the StartleGram, and the Snooze. And, in parts of this county, the Sherman (Denison in the back seat) DumpACrap. But, no DRC.

Bill Patterson, publisher of the DRC, or DWC, clawed it back from Snooze parent A.H. Belo in 2017 after his family sold it in 1999. More on that here. As for Belo's hack job? This is like what the Austin Stateless did to non-daily papers it owned, and even pre-Craphouse, under Cox.

But, Patterson had three years pre-COVID to try to expand some of its old circulation range in print, while also tightening up paywalls more. The latter happened to some degree. But not totally. The former? Never happened. The idea of a Cooke County bureau, or even a dedicated freelancer? Never happened.

Texas Press Association lists circ at 8,403 in 2016, and plummeting to 5,463 in 2019. Now down to 4,697. It was 9,647 in 2013, so the decline accelerated during the handoff time and after, before slowing again.

Then, before the end of 2020, Patterson had already whacked in print from daily, not down to a smaller five-day daily. No. Not even to a tri-weekly. No, it was already cut to semi-weekly.

Then, last year, cut to weekly. That means you lose all the money from print versions of your grocery inserts, for one thing.

Jay Rosen claims the deal "rescued" the paper:

Meanwhile https://t.co/ySmFataYfL — which is PBS and NPR for North Texas — will absorb the Record-Chronicle, the local newspaper in Denton County, thus saving the paper from private equity crocodiles, and gaining a 13-person newsroom staff in the bargain. https://t.co/LebbPFcD25

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) September 28, 2022

To which I responded:

Jay, private equity probably didn't give a damn about the Denton Wrecked-Chronic, er Denton Record-Chronicle. It's down to weekly in print, with an average adhole of only about 25 percent even though it's down to weekly.

— TheRealSocraticGadfly (@real_gadfly) September 28, 2022

Seriously, unless for pennies on the dollar of whatever this brokered deal was, no private equity company would touch it. If it really weren't profitable, Patterson could have shut the damn thing.  Rather, I suspect that he's gotten five years older, five years less interested, no kids with interest, and this was the closest thing to a golden parachute. The National Trust for Local News' announcement, which looks like it was written in 15-year-old Courier font if not on an actual fucking typewriter, kind of confirms this train of thought.

There's other questions.

First, what does KERA know about print journalism? Uhh, about nothing.

Second? Print ad sales, especially since being NPR/PBS, it just has pledge drives and no ad sales in general? Uhh, about nothing.

Third, is Patterson staying as publisher? At the same salary? And, for just a transition period, or something longer?

Let's close by heading back to the half-dead carcass.

Oh, and an editorial staff of 13? Stretched. But, it still partnered with the Snooze for some content, as well as a nonprofit in Fort Worth. So, not stretched THAT much, assuming that 50 percent of what was local and in print was worked up well before Friday print time. 

VERY stretched if they're still doing a daily e-edition. Why? That means 5 copy edit staff. ME, AME and sports editor leaves five other people to write and shoot. If the copy editors aren't part of staff, it's not quite so thin, but still.

Before Denton went non-daily, there weren't even any semi-weeklies in Denton County. A couple of small weeklies, and that's it. So, pretty much a print monopoly. City of Denton is today about 190,000. Denton County 900,000. Lots of cities, all growing. That means LOTS of legal advertisements.

With ALL of that, its weekly print edition, almost without exception, no more than 32 pages, and usually, an adhole no more than about 30 percent or so. Classifieds, counting all those legals, outnumber display ads 3 to 1, if not more. Maybe a full 4 to 1.

Vulture capitalists would care about the paper only to the degree that there's all those legals, and nothing else. But, right now? There ain't a lot else, Jay. Trust me. Usually, I grok it every other week at a Denton Library branch. They have had some decent reporting on the Denton County Appraisal District hot mess, but not a lot else. 

And, let's get back to those missing ads.

A more specific example.

Its football season preview? In an area that big?

TWELVE pages, broadsheet. That's it. I can't remember what, if any, ads were on page 1. Page 2-11? All 6 column x 2 inch strip ads. Full page ad on the back. By the same company that had most, if not all, those 6x2 strips. With that? One semi-stock photo of one top player from each team in the preview.

I know all your big regional dailies, or former dailies, like the Snooze and StartleGram, have had major dropoffs in retail advertising the past few years. Denton shouldn't have had that much of a dropoff, but it did. That said, papers smaller than it have had that much or worse. But not all of them.

As for news coverage outside Denton County that wasn't wire stuff, to tie this to circulation? It covered the trial of the PRO Gainesville trio but not, that I am aware of, any detailed coverage of their protests. I also don't think that it's done any real coverage into Wise County.

Finally? Nonprofit status isn't a panacea. KERA ownership will surely not have conflict of interest issues like the Huntsman family's nonprofit shell for the Salt Lake City Trib. But, beyond that, nonprofit status isn't a panacea.

==

Update, Oct. 22: Somebody actually sold ads this week, even allowing for some being Halloween specials. Adhole of more than 30 percent and more display than classified.

==

Update, Aug. 28: Two months ago, more than half its ads were what HAVE TO BE frequency rate ads for the annual "Best of Denton." Really, advertisers go that all in? Why.

In one issue, throwing those out, and throwing the extra pages they created out as well, you had an adhole of 3 1/4 pages on 18. Less than 20 percent, for a paper just weekly in a city of 180,000 and county of 900,000.

Of course, if you got rid of running six days worth of comics and various puzzles in a weekly newspaper, you'd have 3 1/4 pages of ads on, say, 12 pages of print. That's almost 30 percent.Of course, nobody this side of being a true idiot would pay Bill Patterson $2.50 or whatever for that. Nor would KERA be half as interested in acquiring that. (And, why are you anyway, and are you paying attention to the Trib, and between this and WRR are you biting off more than you can chew?)

RIP Iowa Park Leader

A stalwart within Texas community papers shut its doors in July, saying that it not only wasn't making enough money, but saying it wasn't making money period.

The Leader had been in the hands of the Hamilton family for decades, so this is kind of a stunner. Long time ad salesperson, and I believe on editorial staff before that, Kari Collins reminisces.

At the same time, maybe not.

I don't know what their ad numbers were like, but their circulation had been declining for years. COVID and related issues were just the final nail in the coffin.

Pre-2010, per TPA annuals that I've got in my office, there had been a moderate decline from the 1990s, but nothing I'd call traumatic. About 400 customers over 15 years. Things then stabilized for the next feew years.

But, another decline hit. They lost 300 more in the next three years, between 2013-2016,

However, their circulation then went back to the previous pattern and held steady until 2019, or supposedly. Listing the exact same circ in 2016 and 2019 has me wondering. EXACT same.

Anyway, from there, it fell off a cliff. The 1,636 of 2016 and possibly 2019 was under 1,000 in 2021. That in turn dropped another 100 over the next year.

Assuming 2019 circ numbers aren't correct, I don't know how much of the 2019-21 fall was COVID-related and how much was not. I'd like to get more granular, but I don't have a 2020 directory and I can't find one online.

At the same time, since their last e-dition is not paywalled? Even if all obits on the back page are paid, they still have about 1 3/4 pages of adhole. If they're not paid, we're at barely 1 1/2. Even throwing out the non-insert local grocery store ad in the larger of my two weeklies, and since all obits are free other than a surcharge on massive ones, I still average about 2 1/4 pages a week in a smaller community.

The population has held flat over the last 20 years, which is not fantastic, but not horrible.

Gannett sucked long before it became the new Craphouse

People in the newspaper biz will of course understand who Craphouse is, like they'd understand the reference to Alden's newspaper empire, Dead Fucking Media.

Anyway, the WaPost had a story this week about the latest round of editorial staff cuts at the new Craphouse. The writers noted how Gannett keeps cutting, cutting, cutting, and how this is nothing new, and went back to when it was just Gannett, not the new Craphouse.

But, they miss a few things.

They talk about this paper in Guernsey County, Ohio, for example, and mention that the only full-time editorial staffer at this daily paper was one of Gannett's latest cuts.

Now, for a real newspaper, how do you run it without a local-(ish, these days) editorial staffer? New Craphouse, like other groups big (Can't Nothing Help It [think about it]) and small (Cherry Road Media) just more and more resort to non-local staff mixed with regional content, or in Tex-ass, supplemented by the Texas Trib. (Not even supplemented; replaced would be a better word.)

BUT ...

That ignores something else, because I Googled Guernsey County.

If the "daily" is referring to print, why the hell does a county of less than 40,000, even allowing for the small geographic size and density of Ohio counties, still have a daily paper in the post-COVID world? The Daily Jeffersonian should be the Tri-Weekly Jeffersonian. But it has a circ of 12,000, Wiki claims. Yeah, and I've got palm trees on Lake Erie to sell you. That said, as I said on Twitter, community journalism in Ohio, both small daily and non-daily, puzzle me in many ways.

(Let's ignore the question for now of why many print non-dailies in counties that size still build a daily e-edition, or in CNHI's case, why they put a full week's worth of daily comics, puzzles, etc., into two days of paper and waste money on print costs and on syndication money, when surely COVID would have let them modify such contracts if they're still operational.)

That's the real biggie. 

At the time Dean-o Singleton had the half a light bulb come on with the idea of clustering (idea was good, could have been much better implemented and certainly not in a "Chainsaw Al" way), Gannett was one of the few other chains really positioned to do something like that, and it did bupkis.

That's of a piece, and a 15-years or more timespan with Guernsey County, Ohio, still having a daily paper.

That said, I tried to look at their adhole by e-edition. I forgot Gannett does one of those head fakes, offering to let you sign in with Google or Hucksterman, then telling you you still need a subscription. That's why I don't use my real name with Google.

Sidebar: I blogged last fall about the employee-cutting at the new Craphouse.