Arkansas Democrat-Gazette readers in Conway, only 30 miles from the Little Rock paper’s printing plant, received notice on Friday that weekday print delivery there will cease on July 14.
The news came as talk swirled about a staff meeting in which top officials reportedly discussed plans to print only on Sundays by the end of the year.
Democrat-Gazette Publisher Walter Hussman had hinted at that possibility recently, describing the daily print model as unworkable in today’s dire economic era for general-interest news on paper. On Saturday, he published a letter to subscribers on Page 5A that detailed why the daily newspaper business model has been disrupted, and basically confirming the Sunday-only print plan.
Democrat-Gazette President and General Manager Lynn Hamilton told Arkansas Business that the digital push “does not affect the 12 counties served by the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette,” which will continue to publish seven days a week.
On May 5, as the Democrat-Gazette toasted the bicentennial of the Arkansas Gazette, one of its forerunners, Hussman told his High Profile editor, Rachel O’Neal, that Sunday was the publication’s only profitable day in print. President and General Manager Lynn Hamilton told Arkansas Business recently that the paper would definitely remain in print, but he didn’t dispute that Sunday-only was a possibility.
The paper has been shrinking its print distribution footprint for more than a year, offering subscribers iPads to read its digital replica edition if they would commit to keeping their $34-a-month subscriptions after a reduced-price introductory period.
Hamilton said the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette “will make no reductions in news content or newsroom staffing. In fact, we’re adding content to the digital replica edition that has been unavailable in print, and recently we’ve added a few newsroom positions related to digital enhancement.”
Going digital on all but Sundays would let the paper cut jobs in printing, production and delivery, the industry’s top expenses outside newsgathering. But the long-term profitability of delivering printed news every day, much of it weather, sports and national and world news readily available elsewhere, has become outdated, Hussman wrote in his letter.
“Over a year ago in early 2018, I realized the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was at a crossroad. For the first time in over 20 years, the newspaper would lose money in 2018,” the publisher wrote. Profits had declined every year for a decade, he wrote, prompting the experiment with iPads, which began in March 2018 in Blytheville, 186 miles from Little Rock. “We realized we could deliver the exact same nuewspaper in the exact same format but on an iPad rather than on paper. We also realized that many of our subscribers did not own an iPad. So we included an iPad with the subscription.”
Hussman also dispatched employees to teach subscribers how to use the tablets, an offer he made to every subscriber on Saturday. “The Blytheville experiment was successful with over 70 percent of our subscribers converting to the iPad.” Since then, the experiment has continued, and the paper’s print circulation has retreated toward central Arkansas. In the near future, with the exception of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette footprint, all subscribers will read the weekday paper on iPad and still receive a Sunday print edition.
Weekly and niche publications are faring far better than general-interest dailies in the current climate. Warren Buffett, the famed Nebraska investor and one-time newspaper booster, has said daily newspapers are “toast.” Readers and advertisers have fled, and employing hundreds of people needed to gather and package the news, print it on expensive paper and deliver it individually to thousands of buyers every night is no longer viable.
Hussman has said that if the paper could convert 70 percent of its print subscribers into digital subscribers, the Democrat-Gazette could likely avoid any cuts to the news staff. Of course, deep cuts would be likely in production, printing and distribution.
Sources who attended the meeting and spoke anonymously said Hussman’s message was the iPad initiative is a way to return the paper to profitability by cutting costs without cutting journalistic efforts. There was no mention of layoffs, one source said. Another said that she actually found Hussman’s remarks inspiring.
“Hussman may be onto something that can forever change how we see news,” she said. “He’s putting a lot on it, that is for certain. I also hope the bet works out in journalists’ favor. We need good local news reporting.”
The Wall Street Journal reported early this month that nearly 1,800 U.S. papers closed between 2004 and 2018. In his letter, Hussman noted that total advertising revenues for all U.S. newspapers, “from the New York Times to the smallest weekly,” were down 75 percent since 2000.
“We believe the most sustainable business model ever created was to have a company that is profitable,” he wrote. “Although newspapers will never be as profitable as they once were, we believe we have found a way to return the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette to profitability and provide a better and more robust reading experience for our subscribers. To do that, we need all our subscribers to embrace the iPad replica newspaper experience.”
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