Monday, December 17, 2012

InsideOut Interview: Ira Fusfeld





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.