AP hedges its bets on "we don't need McClatchy and Gannett"

A few months ago, when the two chains said they were either pretty much or entirely spitting the bit on using Associated Press services, the AP said, in essence, "good luck and we don't need them."

Among claims at that time was that the AP only got 10 percent of its bucks from traditional wire feed money.

Er, not zacktly, as AP itself admitted earlier this week.

That 10 percent is from US newspapers only. The total? A "biiitttt" different:

In 2023, 82% of AP’s revenue came from content licensing with 5% from its software solutions business AP Workflow Solutions, 4% from its business providing broadcast facilities and journalists to global broadcasters, and 9% from other streams.

Wow.

No wonder AP, after hinting a few months ago that "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out," is now going Tom Bodett and saying "we'll keep the light on," to translate chief revenue officer Kristin Heitmann:

Heitmann said: “Gannett and McClatchy are important customers for the AP and we never like to lose customers. We are in contract through the end of this year and hope they remain customers of ours for many years to come – and certainly will in some way through the election and beyond in other services we provide.”

She added that “thousands of media” around the world use AP content and they “sometimes test not using us and come back. If that’s the case with Gannett and McClatchy, we have an open door…”

Something tells me that things like that e-commerce biz AP plans probably won't play out well, and will also raise issues about the First Amendment of Journalism's "wall of separation" between editorial and advertising. You gonna do an investigative journalism piece on something you're touting?

Of course, it was running semi-fake news on its website already seven years ago. (That was with Taboola just like the e-commerce dreck, which means AP's been semi-full of itself for years.) Don't forget, AP self-screwed its pooch back in the 1990s when then-board chairman Dean-o Singleton touted the "teevee model" of online advertising.

Of further interest? A year or two ago, the Salt Lake City Trib dumped the AP for: The NYT's wire. If that now includes The Athletic on sports, too?

Gainesville Register trying to kill print subscribers?

 That's the only thing I can think of for their latest stupidity, which came from at least the regional level of CNHI, if not headquarters.

The semiweekly paper — which doesn't even have the largest Texas Press Association circulation numbers of a TPA member newspaper in its own county — raised its newsstand price to $1.50 for midweek and $2.00 for weekend, from previous of $1.25/$1.75.

Those are prices for a 10-page newspaper with no sports other than signing days and one other story, since the end of football season; 10-page newspaper WITH one of those full-page CNHI HQ infographic pages every issue; AND with what all CNHI papers — and some other idjits like the Denton Record Chronicle also continue to do — and with a full three pages of black/white comics, and other comics section material each issue. (On this last item, I assume it's part of CNHI still trying to "puff" or "fluff" its papers in hopes some sucker believes them that they're worth their 1990 values. With Bill Patterson in Denton, since the KERA takeover is already in progress, I have no idea what's in his mind doing six days of that for a print weekly.)

Then, there's pure stupidity on the editorial side.

OK, April 30 issue? Gainesville is known beyond the local area for the Medal of Honor parade and events. Paper runs a couple photos up front, then a HALF page photo page on the back page. Was there a paid color ad on the bottom half? Nooooo .... there wasn't a PAID at at all. Rather, CNHI's "Golf in Bammy" half page ad runs — in BLACK AND WHITE.

And, all this with the presumed luxury of a pagination hub.

Anyway, comp papers in this region to the Register?

Bowie News and Wise County Messenger both have 1.5-2x as many pages each issue, as semiweeklies, than Gainesville. Both have full local sports coverage. Both have 3x the amount of local news coverage, if not more. Both still priced at $1 both issues.

That's why I laughed when TPA asked regional publisher Lisa Chappell to be one of the featured speakers at last year's convention. What insights did she have to offer?

Whether 1.7% or 3.8%, online newspaper disinterest is HORRIBLE

Psy Post talks about research in which people were given a free subscription to the online version of their closest regional daily newspaper, in both Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

Note that I said regional. Not the nearest local five-day daily (or smaller). But, the regional paper. In Pennsylvania, either the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette or the Philadelphia Inquirer. The Raleigh News & Observer in North Carolina.

More than 2,000 free subscriptions, over several weeks, in Pennsylvania. Only 44 signed up to renew paid on their own. That's 2.2 percent if out of an even 2,000. Actually, there were enough beyond 2,000 in the offer that the story says the 44 were 1.7 percent.

Actually, that's not true, in part because of a slight misreading by me originally, that makes the hook better yet. Or worse.

That wasn't churn. Over 13 weeks, those more than 2,000 were offered a free subscription for 13 weeks. Only 44 said yes.

But wait, it gets worse!

The unexpectedly low response led to the second phase of the experiment, where the researchers shifted strategies to direct content promotion. In this phase, the researchers created sponsored posts on Facebook that promoted specific articles from the two state newspapers. These articles covered prominent state-level issues like COVID-19 policies, the governor’s political activities, and fiscal challenges. 

Each Monday over several weeks, the team identified and promoted a new article, aiming to boost engagement with regional issues. This intervention resulted in thousands of targeted Facebook impressions, allowing researchers to see whether directly delivering news content through social media feeds would effectively increase engagement. 

Despite generating tens of thousands of impressions, this strategy did not significantly improve participants’ political knowledge or engagement. The researchers found those exposed to promoted local news stories on Facebook did not demonstrate any significant increases in local political knowledge compared to the control group. 

Similarly, the interventions did not significantly affect measures of civic engagement, such as participation in local elections or activities, or attitudes toward local governance. The surveys administered before and after the interventions showed that participants’ levels of engagement and their attitudes remained largely unchanged.

In a sense, this is no surprise. The story's already given more confirmation to what appears apparent otherwise: Contra the old cliché, all politics is national, at least for Republicans. When state House and state Senate candidates in contested GOP primaries are groveling for a Trump endorsement, what else could it be?

And, they're not disengaged. A survey said 92 percent voted in the 2018 midterm general election. Rather, they're SO engaged, in all politics as national, that the regional paper can't make a dent.

North Carolina? Similar if not quite so bad:

A similar study conducted by Andrew Trexler at Duke University found strikingly similar results. About 500 registered voters in North Carolina were offered a two-month free digital subscription to the Raleigh News & Observer. But uptake was exceptionally low, with only 3.8% of those who received the offer activating their free subscription.

Ye gads. And, the kicker at the end is right. Even if you could get people to read, what can you get them to do?

CJR/Tow has its own Arlie Russell Hochschild

CJR would be Columbia Journalism Review. Tow would be Columbia's Tow Center for Digital Journalism.

And, its Arlie Russell Hochschild, promoting the newspaper version of a librul listening tour, would be Doron Haussig.

Taussig ignores that, a la Twitter, many of the bitchy conservatives want to "own the libs," if not just troll them. Those with more brains see this as a local-level version of Overton Window shifting.

Another reason I'm a leftist — but a skeptical one! — not a librul, and within this biz, still wanting out while eyeballing certain finish lines at the same time.

Gainesville Register vs Weekly News of Cooke County

The Register is a CNHI paper in Gainesville, the county seat. The Weekly News is a (former?) shopper. It's not all classifieds; it has more local news than the Register. But, it has historically been a non-subscription third-class mailer. That said, I have the "former?" in parentheses because it had gradually been cutting back what ZIP codes were non-subscription within in the county and, as of the first of this year, eliminated Gainesville itself, so it's now a second-class mailer subscription newspaper, or will be, when it changes permits.

At some point, though not until next year, at least if it goes to a second class permit, it will need to file a postal report, and we will see what's on there.

OK, the "versus."

For years, as in, going back a decade, even though a third-class shopper, the Weekly News had and has been running legals from various local governments. And, in the case of Gainesville and Cooke County, the aggrieved party would be the Register. (Indirectly, other newspapers in the county might also be aggrieved parties.)

But, the Register did nothing.

Until about a month ago, it started running information on its classified page that its the official newspaper of both entities.

You know what? 

Since that time, the Weekly News has run a Cooke County Sheriff's Office tax sale legal notice. We'll see what, if anything, the Register does besides run another notice in its paper. (Sidebar: The Register legally was running a legal notice from the city of Sherman, so there's that, too.)

Note for KERA and the Denton Record Chronicle

A similar merger has already been completed in Chicago between Chicago Public Media and the Chicago Sun-Times. The DRC/KERA merger, which I have written about before, was completed last summer.

Nieman Lab notes that more people are reading, more staff have been hired, but ....

But management departures and rocky union negotiations have also marked the transition. And a membership drive last fall noted that membership revenue wasn’t covering the losses that occurred after the Sun-Times’ digital paywall was dropped.

Oops.

The bottom line is the bottom line.

For the DRC, there's also another issue. If you go digital-only? You're no longer a "paper of record" for government legal notices. And, there is another print paper in Denton County. Now, the small weekly Pilot Point Post-Signal would look almost like a caricature if it had city of Denton, Denton County, Denton ISD and other legals, as it would be 50 percent classified ads some weeks.

But, the paper has a history of being aggressive on legal ad chasing.

So, watch out what you wish for, Bill Patterson. And, I've written before about Pilot Point doing just that. I've also noted the Wrecked Chronic looks in print kind of like a CNHI paper.

The NYT can't stand the internal Gaza blowback

 It probably also doesn't like the external media scrutiny from another media powerhouse, in this case, the Wall Street Journal training guns on the Old Gray Lady, but, given how often the Times has done exactly this to places like the Washington Post, turnabout is fair play.

As a lot of us know, a lot of the NYT's reporting on Israel-Gaza is shaky at best. (That's why happens when you hire someone with no previous journalism experience, Anat Schwartz, apparently for hasbara-related reasons, and what she and the team with her report doesn't have solid support even in terms of hasbara as journalism.)

So, besides outside pushback, over this and other things, the Slimes (like the Dallas Snooze, Fort Worth StartleGram, etc.) is also getting blowback internally.

And, in a word, from the top down — the top being Executive Editor Joe Kahn, as Pinch Sulzburger keeps himself out of the picture or else the WSJ doesn't rope him in — the brass hats are pissed:

“The idea that someone dips into that process in the middle, and finds something that they considered might be interesting or damaging to the story under way, and then provides that to people outside, felt to me and my colleagues like a breakdown in the sort of trust and collaboration that’s necessary in the editorial process,” Executive Editor Joe Kahn said in an interview. “I haven’t seen that happen before.”

Beyond that "pisses," there's a stereotypical hypocritical airing of grievances.

“Young adults who are coming up through the education system are less accustomed to this sort of open debate, this sort of robust exchange of views around issues they feel strongly about than may have been the case in the past,” he said, adding that the onus is on the Times to instill values like independence in its employees.

Hey Joe, just maybe? Just maybe it's people like you who have that problem.

Seriously, to me, that's exactly what this reads like. You're in the journalism version of a stereotypical ivory tower, a stereotypical part of the "Establishment," you've long been in bed with what I call the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ on foreign policy (Judith Miller ring a bell?) and now, you're finding out that younger hires aren't so much.

And so no, looking just like the US government in similar situations (remember the Dobbs leak?) rather than looking at how and why you published hasbara, you're looking for leakers. And, of course, this gives Kahn the perfect opportunity to sideline a promised internal investigation as to how this got run in the first place.

And, that all said, the WSJ participates in the hasbara. Re the story at issue, it says it was written by "Jeffrey Gettleman and two freelancers." Anat Schwartz, Ms. Hasbara 2024, isn't even mentioned by name.