The Strength of Weeklies   

While daily newspapers struggle for readers, circulation of the nation’s weeklies has increased dramatically over the last decade. There’s no magic formula, just old-fashioned community journalism and intensely local news.

From every street corner in the tidy piedmont town of Guntersville, Alabama, you can see its namesake lake, gleaming just the way Porter Harvey said it did when he named a weekly newspaper after it in 1941.

Harvey died last year at 91, some 54 years after buying out his competition and two months after writing his last story for what had become the Advertiser-Gleam. But his paper continues to thrive, seemingly in a different universe from the one where the daily newspaper industry does battle with dwindling circulation, electronic competition, an increasingly skeptical public and watchful stockholders.

In Harvey's paper--now co-owned by his son Sam and son-in-law Don Woodward--all headlines are set in 14-point type, all photos are snapped in black and white on the same old Polaroid, and all news is, most emphatically, local: A dog with its head stuck in a drainpipe rates a story and a follow-up, but the only way Bill Clinton could get an obituary would be to die right here in town.

It is a paper that would make city editors at daily papers the country over laugh, yet its circulation (12,000) is greater than the population of its town (7,000). Virtually nobody in this corner of the world would think of doing without it.

"Do you subscribe?" Howard Smith, a diner in a crowded Guntersville lunchroom, asks a visitor questioning him about what most locals still just call "The Gleam." "No? Well, that's sacrilegious." And he goes on to echo what others say repeatedly about this paper, which amuses them, maddens them and keeps them intimately informed about local government, drunk driving arrests, gallbladder operations and more. "You can find out who found a snake in their garden, who died and the time of their death in relation to when their spouse died. It's what's what," Smith continues. "I've been reading it since 1956."

The Advertiser-Gleam may be atypical of the 7,000 weeklies in the United States in its near-total inattention to modern-day design and Associated Press style. But along with its passion for the strictly local, it shares with many weeklies two sturdy assets: a loyal, growing readership and a surprisingly healthy, enviably stable niche in the industry--and not just in small, one-newspaper towns like Guntersville.

"When the journalism world thinks of newspapers, they tend to think of daily newspapers," says Tonda F. Rush, president and CEO of the National Newspaper Association, which promotes community newspapers and has 4,000 newspaper members. "They think if there's not another daily in town, there's not another newspaper. But there's an awful lot of competition that goes on between non-dailies and dailies."

In fact, while daily journalism struggles to balance bottom lines with the public trust, weeklies--usually defined as papers publishing one to three times a week--are much more than holding their own. Though Rush cautions that NNA record-keeping methods have varied widely over the years (corrected, she believes, with a major revision of its database in 1993), the 1985 weekly circulation among 7,704 weeklies was calculated at 49 million. In 1995, 8,453 weeklies (including ethnic and "alternative" papers) reported 79 million, with the greatest growth in the suburbs of major cities. Meanwhile, Newspaper Association of America figures show that dailies lost 3.7 million in circulation during that time, from 62.7 million to 59 million. Steady circulation losses slowed a little between September 30, 1995, and March 30, 1996, according to the New York Times, but eight of the country's 13 largest daily newspapers lost circulation in that period.

Editors of weeklies say that their papers seem largely exempt from the dislike and distrust large dailies often encounter and, while these editors are much more likely to face readers' wrath firsthand, they also don't need focus groups and market surveys to keep them abreast of readers' concerns.

"I always say the walk across 235th Street is the longest walk in the world," says Bernard Stein who, with his brother Richard, owns the Riverdale Press, a weekly in the Bronx famous for being firebombed in 1989 after running a First Amendment-based editorial supporting Salman Rushdie.

"I'll be stopped 12, 15, 20 times by people who want to know why the Kiwanis Club was on the left-hand page and the Rotary Club was on the right, or why I wrote that stupid editorial," says Stein. "Folks in Riverdale feel they're stakeholders; they've got ownership rights. It's their newspaper."

Weeklies are rarely the focus of journalistic analysis. A computer search of industry publications shows that usually, when professionals or academics discuss them, it is to consider how they affect dailies. But it may be time to reevaluate. Daily newspapers, particularly in big cities, are beginning to see weeklies as tough rivals for readers' money and time, according to newspaper industry analyst John Morton. And even though weeklies' biggest fans admit the papers' quality vary from excellent to embarrassing, it's no longer safe to shrug off what they do as "booster" or "refrigerator" journalism.

Weekly journalists have always called their work "community journalism," at its best, newspapers produced by committed journalists who care about their region. Journalism schools are also beginning to reconsider the widespread mindset among educators, "If you're not daily, you're dead," focusing instead on the fact that the majority of print journalism jobs are in weeklies. The five-year-old Huck Boyd Center for Community Journalism at Kansas State University was created specifically to train and support community journalists and to improve the image of their newspapers. Oklahoma University is establishing a professorship in community journalism.

"Our mission has not changed," explains Larry Fleischman, executive director of Suburban Newspapers of America, to which about 150 companies publishing 2,000 weeklies in the U.S. and Canada belong. "There's no question why we're in the business... This is our 25th year, and I've been looking back at old documents and newsletters. It's funny to see that as much as we've changed, we've changed very little. It's just local news, local advertisers, local readers."

Jock Lauterer, an associate professor of journalism at Pennsylvania State University and a former weekly publisher, agrees. "All this doom and gloom about ink on paper," he says. "But there are so many [papers] that are just growing by leaps and bounds, high-quality publications run by people who are committed and involved and who love to go to work."

Yet analysts say that while weeklies' circulation has climbed, the real money in newspapers--for journalists and businesspeople alike--remains in dailies. Weeklies' profit margins average 5 percent to 15 percent; some chains expect dailies to return 20 percent or more. And independent weeklies are particularly vulnerable to economic downturns; Lauterer notes that hundreds of weeklies have closed in the past 30 years, while the death of a daily is still relatively rare.

And those working for weeklies do not fare as well financially. Entry-level reporters earn on average $16,000, according to an Inland Press Association study; at dailies, the average is $22,000. Experienced reporters average $20,000 at weeklies, $33,000 at dailies. And weekly publishers make an average $59,000 a year--not even half their daily counterparts' $123,000, says Inland Director of Research Bob Friend.

Weeklies are "a tough business," says analyst Morton. "They don't get circulation revenues, since most of them are free. So they have to depend totally on advertising, which is a lot more volatile."

But with lowered expectations, many chain-owned weeklies don't face the pressure to perform for next quarter's stockholder report that dailies do. That's not to say that the publisher of the "cash cow" weekly shopper can't be determined to milk every column inch for profits. But most weekly executives interviewed said they're philosophically committed to long term instead of short term dividends. "We take the long view," says Bob Doull, who helped found a chain of weeklies in Canada and knows firsthand the severe financial pressures on them. "If we lose credibility with readers, it will do us more harm than good in the long run."

Weeklies, however, do intend to stay in business. Ten years ago, says Fleischman, only a third of his organization's members were part of a chain; now, only a third aren't. Many of the remaining independents are forming advertising networks that allow them to negotiate with big accounts, so they share, say, ads for The Gap while maintaining completely separate editorial identities. Zoned editions of daily papers are a constant threat, but many analysts call them a defensive, break-even proposition, and some weekly publishers say the public can read between the lines. "Metro newspapers have tried zoning for years, and it doesn't work," Fleischman says. "A lot of people see [zoning] as generic news that doesn't get into the heart and soul of the community."

Some say weeklies' success is due in large part to demographics. Since the '80s, says Kenneth Berents of Wheat First Butcher Singer, an investment banking firm, the boom in suburbs produced prime advertising markets. But others see weeklies riding another trend--what former weekly publisher Lauterer calls "people's urgent need for community." Peter W. Wagner, whose N'West Iowa Review has won the state press association's outstanding newspaper award 10 times, is ardent about it. "I believe community journalism right now is facing 20 of the best years it's seen since World War II," he says. "The fracturing of cable, the multiplicity of new radio stations, the fact everybody is talking about but not making any money on the Internet, puts us back to the fact that community journalists are the only real broadcasters in town."

Miranda Spivack, deputy editor for Gazette Newspapers, a Washington Post-owned chain of 17 weeklies in the D.C. area, agrees. "I'm convinced that local and weekly news is the wave of the future," says the former Washington bureau reporter for the Hartford Courant. "That's what propelled me to go from a daily, actually a pretty good local newspaper, to weeklies. People are looking for what they can touch, what they can influence.

"There's a wide range in quality in journalism of weekly papers," she says. "Some are little more than ad sheets with a little editorial copy. Some are very serious about what they're doing journalistically... Our challenge now is to raise our professional standards but maintain our sense of community, to not become little dailies. The big dailies are not well-liked. They're seen as impenetrable, monolithic."

Others say weeklies succeed because they've stayed with tradition--back-to-basics news with heavy dollops of the social and civic activities that parents and neighbors crave. Garrett Ray, a professor at Colorado State University at Fort Collins, sees the public journalism movement as a product of "daily newspapers' growing realization that they were out of touch with their readers... City newspapers that sneered at smaller papers' 'boosterism' are now discovering some virtues in purposeful connections with readers and community institutions."

Joe Meyer, named 1995 journalist of the year by Suburban Newspapers of America, chuckles over dailies' efforts to "reconnect." "I get a real kick out of public journalism, because that's what we do all the time," says Meyer, managing editor of Surburban News Publications, a chain of 21 suburban weeklies around Columbus, Ohio. For instance, his coordination of campaign coverage, including two public forums and packaging candidate interviews into a video available on local cable and in libraries, was all "part of my job. But [a daily paper] would be patting itself on the back for it."

Weeklies know their lifeblood is the local news most dailies no longer print and television ignores. Many publish every item in the weekly police blotter. One issue of the Ellsworth, Maine, American carried 60 inches of crimes such as the theft of 20 sets of Christmas lights from a home that was a finalist in the neighborhood decoration contest and the names of everyone arrested for drunk driving or assault.

The front page of one issue of the Monroe County Appeal (the Paris, Missouri, weekly captured in Norman Rockwell's painting "The Country Editor") listed all 50 prize winners at a local fundraiser and their loot--from 50 gallons of propane gas to a $5 gift certificate from Crider's Bait Shop. Wedding notices in many weeklies still contain elaborate descriptions of bridal gowns and bouquets. Photos of parades and homecoming queens still cover the front page, and columns from rural correspondents, lists of the libraries' new videos and the lunch menus for the senior citizens' center are frequent features.

In addition, many weeklies cover public affairs in great detail--reporting the zoning board's monthly meeting, the library association's luncheon, the gavel-to-gavel details of a local trial. Their stories may include every item on an agenda, or explore topics in the manner of the N'West Iowa Review--a 25-inch piece on a community college faculty's request for an 8 percent raise or an exhaustive, number-studded story on a county supervisor's property tax proposal. Many papers call these stories too institutional, but many at weeklies see it as "the bread and butter" of their pages, says Don Corrigan, a journalism professor and part-owner of two weeklies in St. Louis County. "I think we're looked for as a place where you're going to find the latest controversy on the school board."

Carol Ann Riordan directs American Press Institute seminars for weekly editors and publishers, and her father, former publisher Tom Riordan, has interviewed weekly editors in 46 states for a book. She calls weeklies "the last friendly bit of journalism... It all goes back to covering the real heart-and-soul issues of a community, be that why the quality of life is diminishing in your community, or the possibility of growth in new businesses coming to town, or who gave $50 to the flower club."

Interpretation of weeklies' local news mandate varies, but many define news the way Andrea Paternoster, editor of the Delaware Register and Review in southern New York state, does, to include that which is "kind of beneath the contempt of dailies.

"We're eager to please," says Paternoster. "Virtually anything anybody comes to us with, any idea, if there's a way, we'll get there. We go to people's anniversary parties. We show up at virtually every benefit. If a family is having a cake for someone, celebrating his 40th year working at the fair, we'll cover that."

Bill Sniffin, owner of the Wyoming State Journal in Lander, is unapologetic. "We're big on refrigerator journalism," he says. "I think it's important to have a lot of names and faces in the paper," extending to a front page section titled "Area Deaths." "Now that's a real local newspaper," he laughs.

Defining news more liberally than dailies do helps Doull's WestMount Press Ltd., a chain of 17 weeklies in Alberta and British Columbia, succeed--with standards, said an article in the Calgary Herald, that placed them among papers that prevail because of quality. "We wanted every event that was newsworthy, that happened in the community, to be recorded and made note of," says Doull. "Every time the library had a reading for kids, or if a tree fell on the road, we got it in. We covered it like a blanket."

David Rooney, editor of WestMount's paper in Alberta, the Banff Crag & Canyon, says disdaining such news is "really being arrogant and quite contemptuous of readers in general. Not everyone who reads a paper is a politician or a high-powered businessman. Most people's concerns are very ordinary--what the kids are doing, the school plays, the rummage sales, though that's not the only kind of thing a good weekly covers."

"In fact, the term 'refrigerator journalism' isn't always disparaging," says John Neibergall, executive director of Kansas State's Huck Boyd Center. "If people think enough of what you do to put it on a refrigerator, you've connected with them... There are lots of weekly newspaper publishers and editors whose work is real important to the community and who do make a difference."

But no one denies that a weekly's emphasis on the exclusively local can become the exclusively positive. At the worst and not uncommon extreme, the weekly is a thinly disguised advertising leaflet, the little "news" it contains shamelessly promotional in tone. "In smaller towns, the health of the newspaper is dependent in large part on the health of the local economy," says Bruce Beal, former deputy city editor of the now-defunct San Antonio Light and current owner of the Weimar Mercury in Texas. "You do tend to boost things like growth... This is a completely different kind of journalism than big-city journalism."

Still, Beal says, his paper's tone reflects reality in a 2,100-person town. "I won't put crime stuff on the front page unless it's really big stuff, like a murder. But in three years, there hasn't been one," he says. "There are two to three burglaries a year. Our front page stuff is mainly kids getting awards. A lot of the attraction is, in a small town people do see their kids' picture in the paper for getting an award rather than for being arrested for something."

Yet many in weeklies say they get little credit for the tough journalism they do--and at much closer quarters with their readers than the big dailies. For every pandering publisher, they say, there's at least one principled one who is unmoved by local pressures--like Western Nebraska Observer Copublisher Bob Pinkerton, whose life was threatened and whose lawn was doused with toxic chemicals when he supported a hazardous waste incinerator in Kimball, Nebraska. Richard Lee, executive director of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, says Pinkerton "has been fighting the same political machine for 30 years," though Pinkerton says what he did was not "that unusual... I guess if you are fair with the people and they recognize it, that's all they want."

Stein, who says the firebombed Bronx's Riverdale Press was rebuilt with an outpouring of community support, agrees. "There are plenty of gutsy weekly newspapers, and advertisers come to learn that if they're putting their ad in a newspaper that people know has integrity, somehow that rubs off... We've never lost [an advertiser] permanently. In the long run, it's better for your bottom line."

Richard McCord, former owner of the Santa Fe Reporter, maintains that "the vast majority [of weeklies] are still booster papers." But, he adds, "some of the very best papers around the country are weeklies." The Wyoming State Journal's Sniffin calls the booster label "a bad rap. There's just as many timid big papers as there are small ones." And the small papers are just as committed to news: Instead of the traditional 60/40 advertising/editorial ratio, Sniffin's paper, like many independent weeklies in the Inland study, leans more toward 40/60. But, says Sniffin, "it would be hard for me to persuade a chain or a public stockholder that my system is the right way of doing things."

Yet corporate ownership may be the future even for the feisty family owned weekly. Doull says he founded WestMount's chain of weeklies when competition started coming "from sources we didn't have the wherewithal" to fight. "Essentially, you have to form your own chain to give yourself the ability to survive," says Doull. But like many weekly executives, he says his group maintains a "family business feel" by avoiding editorial budget cuts. "During the recession, we didn't cut any positions. We had a higher level of benefits than provided by union shops... We have to keep people we value."

The Suburban Newspaper Association's Fleischman says attitudes like Doull's can preserve the best of what weeklies offer while keeping weeklies alive. "As long as the editors and reporters and the people who work on the staff continue to work and live there, and as long as the money and resources continue to be sunk into the paper, it doesn't have to be bad," he says. But, he admits, "whenever you see a merger or an acquisition, see new bosses come in, you usually see some expansion of profit margins."

"The same thing that happened to mom-and-pop grocery stores is happening to mom-and-pop papers," agrees NNA's Rush. "When you get to a certain size, you can bargain better for newsprint prices. Economies of scale are better in circulation and advertising" at chain-owned papers, she says.

Hikes in advertising rates at big papers have encouraged some businesses to turn to comparably cheaper weeklies, and the weeklies' less frequent publication schedule has helped some weather higher newsprint costs.

That doesn't mean weeklies are going to make many millionaires. But they have their compensations. "I try to make a virtue out of necessity," says Stein of his inevitable loss of reporters to better-paying, prestigious dailies. "I always say I'm the dean of the best journalism school in the state. This is a terrific place to have a first or a second job."

But even for prospering owners, independent weekly newspapers are an exhausting avocation. One major Huck Boyd Center program provides students and professors to fill in for area editors taking their first vacation in 15 years, and director Neibergall himself turned to teaching after owning four community newspapers. "I had the time of my life. I loved it," he says. "But you work the 90-hour week... After 13 years, I had had all the fun I could handle."

But Neibergall, like so many weekly editors and publishers, seems unable to relinquish the romance. His work now is "all about keeping the dream alive of owning a community newspaper," he says. "I think it's a great calling. I hope daily newspapers will see what we do as important, that serving the community is important."