Why are you "holding" the print version of your weekly newspaper?

 I am writing from Texas. A nearby newspaper, owned by a friend, who's also a journalism/mass communications prof.

This last Tuesday was Texas primary election day. Tuesday is his press day, and mine as well. 

Our press normally likes our newspapers at 5 p.m. or so.

The only statewide race in real doubt was the Democratic Senate primary. I think we were pretty sure the Republican Senate primary was going to a runoff, AG, Comptroller and RRC were going to runoffs, Gov and Lite Gov were blowouts, and that Dems would likely have a runoff for AG as well. 

There was one closely contested county commissioner race in his county. A district judge and the county clerk were also contested, but not closely. 

And, you do have a website. 

Plus, we all know that in a county of any size, county elections officials will post the results quickly on the county's website. 

I would have printed at normal time. 

RIP Commerce Journal

I heard that CNHI pulled the plug on the Commerce Journal a while back. Ridiculous. Solid, eight-page weekly which could easily have had, I'm going to guess, 20 percent more advertising. It may have been the case that a lot retailers targeted East Texas State's A and M Commerce's student and faculty population with ads in the campus newspaper, but still.

That said, Commerce Mayor Wymon Williams said that, for these and similar reasons, he doesn't really blame CNHI. He said that about 80 percent of university staff lives outside of Commerce and that, of course, city population drops dramatically in the summer. He also indicated he wished the U could have done more to promote the paper to said staff, in part to try to get them to move to Commerce.

Williams adds that the Journal was down to about 400 paid subscriptions. So, a certain amount of U-shaming is probably warranted.

That said, in addition, the Bama bean counters never could figure out "synergies" between it and the Greenville paper, from what I saw. (They've had that problem for years at bigger places, like not getting more work-together between Mineral Wells and Weatherford. Surprisingly, the Index is still a five-day daily, but probably one as thin as other such CNHI products. Scratch that; up at the top of the listing, the Texas Press Association says that, but lower, has them listed as semiweekly. That said, most the information in the top box is out of date; having known Mel Rhodes as publisher 20 years ago, I was surprised to see him still listed, and he shouldn't be.)

Also weirdly, while CNHI has pulled the plug on the paper, it continues to maintain the website, while at the same time not posting any Commerce-specific online news to it, even though it's printing Commerce News inside the Greenville Herald. So, why not put that on the Journal's website, if you're keeping the website alive.

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.

Why does the Cal Legislature hate newspapers?

A new bill that has just passed the California Legislature and been sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom for (let us hope not) his signature attempts to rein in the worst of the "gig economy."

With a blunderbuss sized gun firing indiscriminately.

It would be a killer to the non-daily and small daily "community" newspaper industry. Namely, it would require any paper that gets more than 35 submissions a year from a freelancer to make that person a regular employee. It would also require route delivery drivers to be made paid employees on similar terms.

That said, THAT one I don't object to.

Community newspapers could, instead, go back to using people like me 45 years ago — kids delivering the newspaper when they couldn't work yet at a "regular" job, and making a few bucks, and by doing the monthly "collect" calls on subscribers for money, learning a little responsibility, too.

A tab a month in a county of 30,000?

The newspaper I am at now is a weekly in a city of 7,500 and county of about 30,000; it’s the only paper in the county and is not part of a local “group.” I don’t know for sure if that’s too much, to do a tab every month, or I just don’t want that much work, but I think that’s probably a bit heavy. A tab every 6-7 weeks, on average, is probably more realistic.

Another drawback to small-town papers

Someone with money and/or an “old family name” who thinks they can throw their weight around. If too much dealings with people like that, depending on a town’s collective “DNA,” is too much the price to pay, then I’m ready to move on past the “more healthy” small town papers out of journalism.