WHY GIVING UP ON YOUR LOCAL PAPER COSTS MORE THAN BUYING
ONE: A conversation with The Freeman’s Ira Fusfeld
Ira Fusfeld knows the newspaper business: he's been the
publisher of the Daily Freeman and Sunday Freeman in Kingston, N.Y. since 1987.
Before that, he was one of their sports writers, then became sports editor,
editor and finally general manager. Ira also served as the publisher of The
Independent in Hillsdale, and the Taconic Press weekly newspaper group in
Millbrook, an umbrella organization for Dutchess Magazine and the Hudson Valley
Guide.
All of these publications are owned by the journal Register
Company, which in February filed for Chapter 11. Unfortunately for all of us,
with the exception of the Freeman, all have been closed.
Owen Lipstein: From your vantage point, what is happening to
the role of newspapers?
Ira Fusfeld: Well, I'm certainly not Pollyana-ish on this. I
recognize what's going on. This is an industry, and a profession, that I've
been in personally for 40 years. It's the only thing I know how to do—so anything
I say that may be positive shouldn't be construed as just wishful thinking.
That said, we know what's going on in terms of reader
habits. Those of us who've been publishing newspapers saw that, even before the
Internet became a factor, trending was not good: that younger people were not
reading us, or anything else for that matter. I can recall at least 25 years
ago when we started our Friday entertainment section, and that was a result of
some research that said you'd better try to figure out something to drag in
people who are between 18 and 30 because they're otherwise not finding you
interesting. So the trending of people not reading daily newspapers began even
before the Internet.
OL: What's going to happen in cities that have two
newspapers? Are they all going to become one?
IF: I think it's very grim in big cities that have two
newspapers. There aren't too many of them left, and I suspect that there'll be
even fewer as we go forward. New York City has got essentially three—and then
four if you add Newsday—and it's hard to imagine that either the New York Post
or the Daily News will survive. And The New York Times has problems that are
well-documented.
However, I think the silver lining for newspapers can be
found, and I think they're found in the kinds of newspapers that I'm more
familiar with, which are smaller community daily newspapers that have content
that is unique—[local content] that generally can't be found anywhere else.
That gives us a leg up as long as the resources that we have are still
sufficient enough to produce the kind of content that has made us unique, and
made us something that people want to read. Of course, therein lies the rub to
further complicate things: at a time when the industry was suffering all of
these problems particular to the industry, then the recession kicked in. I'm not
sure how it's impacted you folks, but certainly at the newspaper level it's
really hurt our advertising base, so it's made it harder for us at a time when
there were already a lot of hurdles to jump.
OL: What happens to a community when suddenly there's no
newspaper?
IF: I think the line that best describes the answer to your
question is: "You don't know what you have until it's gone." I think
that for people in any community where there's a newspaper that all of a sudden
disappears, they realize what it is that they were getting and what it is
they're missing, and unless that void is filled by something else, it creates a
big hole in the community. The New York Times or the Albany Times Union, to
make it even closer, is not going to be covering the Columbia County
legislature or the Town Boards up there, and if not them, then who? So then, of
course, what happens is that not only is the public not informed but, depending
on the character of the politicians in the community, they can do a lot of
things without the glare of the public, who are represented by the newspaper
looking over their shoulder. So the implications are great, and they're as
great at a macro level as they are at a micro level of some small little paper
in a corner of New York state.
OL: You know, one of the things that I find hard to explain
to people, whether you're weekly, daily or monthly, is the cost of reporting.
To cover local issues or national issues, or cover any subject judiciously is a
skill, and you have to pay people to do that. And when you aren't able to pay
people to do that, the bias in information, or the lack of information, has
consequence.
IF: First of all, you're quite right. I think when you look
around the country in this period a number of industries, including ours, are
laying people off, if not closing. Those industries that are laying off fewer
people are industries that are not as labor intensive as ours is. The fact of
the matter is, the newspaper industry is very labor intensive because the labor
goes well beyond just the reporters. Most people don't know what happens after
a story is written, and how many people's hands have to touch it, and where it
goes from there, and how that [editorial] side of the room combines with the
advertising side to do what it is that they're doing—and on and on down the
line to the press, to the distribution. So it's a very expensive proposition.
But you're right that it's expensive to publish a newspaper
whether it's a daily or a weekly. Certainly less so to publish a weekly, but if
you're going to want to do quality journalism you're still going to have to
find good people; that is something that
can't be done necessarily by somebody who is brand new in the business. I've
seen too many rookie reporters who come in the door and cover a meeting as if
they were covering something for a high school class. You know, "On Monday
morning, so-and-so met and here's what happened." As if they're stenographers
rather than reporters.
The more experienced people you have, the more expensive
they're going to be, and rightly so. And that, again, of course, is something
that has been compromised in this climate of economic difficulties for the
industry, and with the recession.
OL: What about the problem of getting readers to pay the
real value—as opposed to the charge value—of a newspaper when they've developed
a habit of effectively being subsidized by advertisers? Now you have to sort of
break it to them that if they want the information they have to pay more—in an
environment where content seems to be getting freer, not more expensive.
IF: Well, years ago—and I'm not holding this up as a paragon
of journalism—but when Al Neuharth and Gannett started USA Today, Neuharth
famously said that the newspaper industry had made a big mistake for a number
of years by not charging more for the price of the paper every day: that the
large amount of information across the board editorially, plus the advertising
information, was worth much more than the quarter, or 50 cents that companies
were charging. And the cow was sort of out of the barn and it is very difficult
to raise the prices—the cover price, or the delivery price. I can tell you at
the Daily Freeman here in Kingston—it's almost something we morbidly joke
about—but every time we raise the price of home delivery, for example, we can
pretty much predict how many subscriptions we're going to lose. Then after
about a year or so, that number—at least in the past—regenerated itself, and
you'd get back where you were, and then—we'd raise the price again.
So, I think what we in the industry believe is going to
happen—and it may be a pie in the sky—is that one of the good things about
what's going on now is that the public is finally recognizing that we have a
serious crisis and that newspapers in fact are going away, and that more may go
away. And that has made people think a little bit more about their newspapers,
and perhaps, we hope, their willingness to pay more for them.
I think the big discussion in the industry, as you alluded
to, is right now there's so much free content out there—much of it generated by
the newspaper industry—and I think as [columnist] Frank Rich wrote in The New
York Times a few weeks ago, people are going to have to make a decision that
news content is something they're willing to pay for. There was a time in this
country when none of us ever thought we would be paying for TV, and most people
now have cable and buy some premium services. Many people never thought that
they would be buying music on iTunes and they're doing that. So, that's the
model that may well happen with newspapers, and we're going to find out.
There's no question in my mind. There was a time two or three years ago [when]
I was sort of a lone voice saying at some point in time newspapers are going to
have to charge for their content on the Internet, and people were telling me it
would never happen. Now everybody is saying it will happen, and now the
question is how are we going to do it, and when is it going to happen? That's
when the rubber will meet the road and we'll see whether people want to pay for
this content.
OL: The thing at the heart of what we're talking about is
that Internet dollars are Internet pennies, and people would like to think that
the relatively small amount of incremental advertising from the Internet is
going to in some way, shape, or form, substitute for the old revenue streams
which were from print advertising—and it never will.
IF: I'm a little bit more optimistic about that, but I think
I would acknowledge that [Internet revenue] is not there yet, and that has surprised
us. I don't mean it being there in the same amount that the print advertising
has been, but it has sort of surprised me that advertising agencies—or whomever
is making these advertising decisions—haven't recognized what are in fact real
readership numbers of newspapers on the Internet. The fact of the matter is, as
you've probably heard or read, that newspapers—for all the problems we're
having—have never been read by more people than they currently are if you
combine the Internet and the print product and the volume of eyeballs that are
being attracted to newspaper websites. Certainly The New York Times being the
most significant. It seems to me to be so significant that I'm surprised and disappointed
that the advertising has not followed.
I still think that that time is coming, but you're quite
correct—as of right now, whatever revenue is coming in, the dollars are not
nearly the same as in print. But if we take the premise to the extension that a
New York Times may at some point just be an Internet version, it's hard for me
to believe that they will not be able to generate significantly more money, and
that that amount, albeit less than the print revenue, will still be significant
enough to cover their costs, because their costs will have decreased because of
the reasons we mentioned earlier.
OL: You’ve been doing this for a long time. Why do you love
the newspaper business?
IF: Well, you know, remember Ted Baxter on the old
"Mary Tyler Moore Show"? It all started in a 3000-watt station. I
grew up in New York City in the 1950s at a time when there were seven daily
newspapers. Both of my parents worked. Both of my parents took the subway. Each
of them bought a morning paper, each of them bought an evening paper, and we
had one other paper delivered. So each day of the week in my apartment we had
five newspapers, and it was a part of my DNA from as long as I can remember.
I was also a big sports fan, and when it was clear to me in
my younger days that if I was going to have any kind of relationship with
sports, it wasn't going to be as a participant, but perhaps there would be
another way. Then I started reading with some degree of scrutiny the sports
pages. So I'm in a way lucky, and perhaps unique in that I never wanted to be
involved with anything else but newspapers. I can't imagine a day without a
daily newspaper—you know, when I'm on vacation, I'll seek one out. It's just
part of me.
I started [at the Daily Freeman] as a sports writer in 1970
with the idea of working here for two or three years and getting it on my
resume, and then going back and being the next big sports writer in New York
City. One thing led to another in terms of my personal life. I got married, had
kids and started getting promoted. So I've been here about 35 years longer than
I thought I'd be, but I've never regretted it. I’m closer to the end of my
career now than the beginning, so I don't anticipate leaving.
I feel a great passion for what it is we do. You come in
every morning with white paper, and at the end of the day, miraculously,
there's something on 24 or more daily newspaper pages. Some days we like what
we do, and some days we're buoyed by it, and some days we're annoyed by what
we've done. At least we have the chance to try it again the next day.
It's just been something that's been a part of me, so I take
what's going on in the industry personally because I know how hard people work
to do what it is we do. I know we're not perfect, I know that there are
mistakes in newspapers large and small, but I know that by and large we are a
great resource, and I just really fear for the public: I don't mean this to be
corny, but if the worst case happens and newspapers go away, there will be
other platforms that will try to fill the void—but I'll need to see that
they're going to be able to do it as well as we can do it.
