Evolving the business model of community news with Reviving Rural News’ Teri Finneman, Nick Mathews and Pat Ferrucci (LNM Episode 45)

Oct 31, 2024

LNM 45 - Reviving Rural News

Teri Finneman, Nick Mathews and Pat Ferrucci, authors of “Reviving Rural News: Finding a Sustainable Future for Community Journalism,” explore the unique challenges facing rural newspapers in the wake of the local news industry's financial crisis. They discuss their yearlong experiment with a Kansas newspaper, offering insights into how small community-based outlets can diversify revenue streams and reconnect with their readers. The conversation highlights the disconnect between traditional business models and the needs of both rural publishers and their audiences.

The guests also touch on the psychological and organizational barriers that hinder innovation in local newsrooms. From reluctance to explore new revenue sources like philanthropy to the ongoing devaluation of journalism, they offer candid perspectives on why rural news must evolve to survive. Key takeaways include lessons on pricing, the power of e-newsletters and the role of newspapers as vital community institutions.

With practical examples from their case study in Kansas, the discussion reveals how local publishers can take small but significant steps to adapt their business models and better serve their communities.

Episode chapters:
(00:03:13) – Origins of the Reviving Rural News project and the COVID-era struggles of rural newspapers
(00:07:03) – The uniqueness of rural journalism and the resilience of community newspapers
(00:12:03) – The challenges of journalism research, especially around business models
(00:18:23) – Take my money, please: Reluctance to change
(00:20:50) – How we got here: History of the penny press model
(00:24:39) – Disconnects between the business models readers want and what publishers offer
(00:28:34) – Why newspapers are reluctant to change
(00:34:55) – Revenue models and returning newspapers to their role as community institution
(00:42:07) – Raising prices as an imperative for many community newspapers
(00:51:09) – The importance of both print and e-newsletters in rural communities
(00:58:22) – Steps for small publishers: Where to begin with change

Listen to the episode here:

Links:

Bio:

Teri FinnemanTeri Finneman

Teri Finneman is an associate professor in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas and publisher of The Eudora Times, a nationally recognized news desert publication that she runs with journalism students. She previously worked as a print journalist and multimedia correspondent covering state government, business and enterprise. Her research focuses on news coverage of U.S. first ladies and women politicians, as well as the U.S. suffrage movement. She is an oral historian who captures the histories of journalists in the Heartland. Finneman is also founder and executive producer of the Journalism History podcast and The First Ladies podcast. She is the author of Press Portrayals of Women Politicians, 1870s-2000s, which was named a 2016 finalist for the Frank Luther Mott – Kappa Tau Alpha book award for best research-based book about journalism or mass communication. Her co-edited book, Social Justice, Activism and Diversity in U.S. Media History, released in spring 2023. Her co-authored book, Reviving Rural News, released in 2024. Her co-edited book, A Cambridge Companion to US First Ladies, will release in 2025. 

 

Nick MathewsNick Mathews

Nick Mathews is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri. His research interests focus on local news, rural journalism, news audiences and news deserts. His co-authored book — titled “Reviving Rural News: Transforming the Business Model of Community Journalism in the U.S. and Beyond” — was published by Routledge in February 2024. His solo-authored book — titled “Deserted: How Rural Residents are Living with the Loss of Local Journalism” — has received an advance contract from the University of Illinois Press. He has research published in numerous peer-reviewed, academic journals. Previously, he worked in the journalism industry for more than 20 years, including time as a senior editor at the Houston Chronicle and as a regional editor-in-chief in Central Virginia.

 

Patrick FerrucciPatrick Ferrucci

Pat Ferrucci (PhD University of Missouri School of Journalism) is chair and associate professor in the Department of Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research is in media sociology and focuses on how market models and revenue streams impact journalistic practice. He’s the author or coauthor of the books The Organization of Journalism (2024), Reviving Rural News (2024), and Making Nonprofit News (2019). He also co-edited the book The Institutions Changing Journalism: Barbarians Inside the Gate (2022).

 

Full transcript:

(recorded via Riverside.fm; transcript automated via Castmagic.io, mostly unedited)

TERI FINNEMAN [00:00:00]:These little operations were having to become CNN, 24/7 News because nobody else could get information on that kind of micro level from anywhere else. Yet at the same time, these organizations were bleeding money because advertisers were dropping off. These publishers were talking, some of them, you know, about drinking more, about depression, about the stress that they were under, and it just really made me realize this is just completely messed up. Right? We have known for a while now that the business model for this industry was not working, and it took this crisis situation. I mean, we lost newsrooms during COVID because they financially went under, and I was just extremely frustrated. Like, where the hell has academia been that we have let our industry get to this point? Where have we been? We should have been helping them solve this by now. And so I was just extremely frustrated, and I was like, well, if nobody else is gonna do it, I wanna do something about this. And I knew that Pat and Nick were the right partners to make this happen. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:01:14]: Welcome to the Local News Matters podcast, where we explore pathways to stronger journalism, better businesses, and healthier communities. I'm Tim Regan-Porter, CEO of the Colorado Press Association.  

This episode, I talk with Teri Finneman, Nick Matthews and Pat Ferrucci, three academics from different institutions whose collaborative project was chronicled in their book Reviving Rural News: Finding a Sustainable Future for Community Journalism. 

The book explores the financial crisis in local news, the special role and challenges of rural newspapers, and how they can evolve to survive and better serve their communities. It chronicles a yearlong experiment to help a newspaper in rural Kansas diversify their revenue streams and better connect with their communities. The short read has many lessons for small rural newsrooms, but those also extend to news organizations of all sizes and configurations.  

On the podcast, we discuss the disconnect between how newsrooms see revenue opportunities and what readers want, the psychological and systemic barriers publishers face to innovating, and the absolute imperative for community journalism to change in order to survive. 

If you like this episode and what we're doing more generally, please follow in your favorite podcast app, leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and tell your friends about us. This is a side project and a labor of love, and your support means a lot. You can find past episodes, full transcripts, and relevant links, and sign up for our newsletter at localnewsmatterspodcast.com, or for lazy typists like me at lnmpod.com. You also follow us on most social media channels @lnmpod. 

And now I bring you Teri, Nick and Pat.
Well, welcome, Nick, Teri, and Pat. So why don't each of you we're here to talk about the work you've been doing that resulted in Reviving Rural News. And, why don't each of you introduce yourself, and maybe the first couple times you talk, state your name so people can associate the names with the voices. 

Origins of the Reviving Rural News project and the COVID-era struggles of rural newspapers 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:03:13]: Give us a little bit of your background research and, research background, and any other work that you find particularly relevant to, Reviving Rural News. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:03:24]: I'm Teri Fineman. I'm an associate professor of journalism at the University of Kansas, and I'm also the publisher of the Eudora Times, a news desert publication that I started with students five years ago. My research focuses heavily on journalism in the great plains states, and I am also a journalism historian with an emphasis on how the press has covered the White House and First Ladies. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:03:51]: My name is Nick Matthews. I'm an assistant professor at the University of Missouri at the School of Journalism. I study mostly rural audiences, and so I consider myself in many ways a representative of audiences for news organizations to help them better serve those audiences. And that is why I kinda studied news ecosystems in the rural space and inequalities of access to news and information, so that's news deserts, broadband issues, and all of those kinds of things. 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:04:23]: This is Pat Ferrucci. I wanna just point out that Nick's clearly authentic with the way that he says rural, can tell you that he cares about rural, that he is rural. So Pat Ferrucci, I'm an associate professor in the department chair at the Department of Journalism at University of Colorado Boulder. My work primarily focuses on how the business models or the business of journalism in general impacts how journalists do their jobs. So I come at that from, like, a media sociology perspective looking at essentially the things that happen at an organizational level. How do they impact the lived experience, the work experience of journalists? How do they change what they do? 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:05:09]: Great. So, Teri, why don't you start us off, with how the project that the book talks about, how that got started. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:05:19]: Yeah. So this can really go back to 2020. At that time, I was working on a project with Will Mari where we were doing oral histories with journalists from North Dakota down to Louisiana all the way through the middle of the country, in the summer of 2020 when COVID was at its very beginning and how it was impacting newsrooms. And that project will have a forever impact on me because we're visiting with these very small newsrooms, these editors and publishers, about how this was a time when people were just demanding news constantly. These little operations were having to become CNN, 24/7 news because nobody else could get information on that kind of micro level from anywhere else. Yet at the same time, these organizations were bleeding money because advertisers were dropping off, these publishers were talking, some of them, you know, about drinking more, about depression, about the stress that they were under, and it just really made me realize this is just completely messed up. Right? We have known for a while now that the business model for this industry was not working, and it took this crisis situation. I mean, we lost newsrooms during COVID because they financially went under. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:06:39]: And I was just extremely frustrated, like, where the hell has academia been that we have let our industry get to this point? Where have we been? We should have been helping them and solve this by now. And so I was just extremely frustrated, and I was like, well, if nobody else is gonna do it, I wanna do something about this. And I knew that Pat and Nick were the right partners to make this happen. 

The uniqueness of rural journalism and the resilience of community newspapers 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:07:03]: Yeah. That's one of the things I appreciated about the book was the fact that you did not hide, calling academia to task a little bit. And I think some of the blame was with industry who sometimes can be reticent to work with anybody outside of their newsroom. But, you know, this is such a crisis that we really need all hands on deck and all ideas on the table. Let's just dive in and go through some of the work that you write about. And one of the other things I really appreciated was early on in the book, I think it was chapter 2, you really highlight the uniqueness of rural journalism, rural publications, community news. And that's something that when I started here at the Colorado Press Association was really new to me. I mean, I'd started working with some community news outlets and coalitions just before that. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:08:02]: And, you know, having grown up sometimes, you know, even before I was in the industry, you know, my—when I thought of newspapers, I would think of metro dailies, and that's what we hear about. When people talk about the industry and the, what's going on, it's almost always in that context. And, you know, even for practitioners for decades, there was a career ladder. Right? You would start at a small paper and you would try to work your way up. And so there was this dismissiveness almost towards small community papers. And one of the things that's really struck me as I've been here in Colorado is how numerous they are, how much of the ecosystem they make up, how much journalism they produce, how integrated they still are into communities, and then to some extent, how resilient they are. I mean, they are in crisis and they're hanging by a thread, but they've hung on in some ways better than I think some of the metro dailies. So why don't we talk a little bit about that initial setting the stage of how numerous these publications are and how much journalism they actually produce? And even on the readership side, they make up a majority, I believe, of the audiences for, certainly for newspapers. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:09:19]: Well and this is Nick. I mean, yeah. So there are roughly 6,500 newspapers in the United States, and 5,500 of them are in our weekly newspapers. And most of, the great majority of them in rural communities. And so when you're looking at the entire corpus of news organizations in the United States, the great majority of them are small weekly rural publications. Not—I mean, when you're looking at national news organizations, you're probably looking at four. I mean, Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal. Then you get into metros, but even the Saint Louis Dispatch, the Kansas City Star where I'm near, they're shrinking by the day. I mean, so the—but there remain in the state, the great state of Missouri, every county has at least one newspaper. Now there are certainly states that are losing them and have news deserts as I'm sure we'll talk about. But, I mean, there are an inordinate number of small news organizations across the country. 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:10:23]: And just—this is Pat, because I think Teri can really speak to what we were trying to do in finding these rural places. But I think, to your point, Tim, one of the main things that happens in academia, right, or just in even in the journalism industry. Right? Like, open up any open up Poynter, Nieman. These places are predominantly staffed by elites who think about journalism as the places that Nick just talked about or the incredibly moneyed places like the Texas Tribune or something. And there's this, understand there's this implicit notion that if they find a way to figure things out, then everybody can, or it could be modeled or something like that. And, like, our research shows that's just—not even just rural. These, everybody's sort of different. Right? There's just not one size fits all for any of these places. 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:11:17]: You're not gonna be able to get big donors in, you know, rural Missouri. You're not, you know, like you can in, suburban Denver. You know, it's just a different place. And so I think that's not something you just see in what we're talking about in, like, the academic literature, but I think that's even more of an issue in the industry. Right? This is what we talk about when we talk about journalism, this small subset of places that exist where there's a lot of money. And the people that get to be the ones who talk about journalism tend to have come from the places that come from the money. I went to Columbia School of Journalism. Right? All these things, that is where some of the problem lies also. 

The challenges of journalism research, especially around business models 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:12:03]: Right. And in terms of, you know, legacy media, you know, some people might point to surveys that show how much of the public gets their news from local TV news. But TV and radio have large geographic areas, and they're not covering the same types of news that these community weeklies are covering. You know, these small town city councils and school boards and business opens and closings and high school football. They don't have the news hole and the staff to cover it. So these really are vital institutions for these communities. And in, you know, digital publications that the, you know, digital startups have not been in these areas either, by and large. They've tended to be in metro areas and places with wealth. And so that's not filling the hole. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:12:54]: Why, you know, we all know digital's the future, but it's not just gonna happen without really looking at the business model in these rural areas. So let's go on from there to talk about how you went about surveying newsrooms, publishers, editors, and the public as well, and then selected your focus groups, and then eventually did the Press Club experiment. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:13:21]: Well, that's a lot to tackle at once, but I'll start by saying, that we were fortunate to get a significant grant from, first of all, the University of Kansas School of Journalism, and then second of all, from the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation that allowed us to do this work in the first place because, you know, doing this kind of big project is very expensive, and certainly that prohibits this kind of work being done. And so we were able to use that funding for a couple of critical reasons. One was to hire a professional survey company because I'm sorry, but I don't have time to find an 80-year-old man in rural South Dakota to ask his input, right, while I'm in Kansas, because we wanted as representative of as a sample as possible. And, I mean, we told the survey company, CODA Ventures, that we specifically wanted the big towns left out. We did not want people in Fargo or Lincoln or Sioux Falls or Wichita to be part of the survey. We specifically wanted to hear from rural readers as to what they thought. Now we had some challenges. Our initial idea was to do a national survey of publishers to get a feel on their thoughts on the business model. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:14:38]: And, certainly, one of the challenges that we have as researchers is getting the industry to agree to take part. Right? It's very easy to delete an email, like, oh, another survey, delete. I'm not gonna do that. It's actually really important that the industry fills out that information so that we can help you. So when it came down to it, because the three of us have the stronger ties in these great plain states, those were primarily the people who filled it out. And so, therefore, we had our results focused specifically on that. Now that's not to say that somebody in Oregon or California can't learn something from our project, but it's just that was the data we had to work with. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:15:20]: You know, one of—maybe I should step back a little bit and say, you know, you're really digging into the business model and the crisis in local news. It, that's where it's at. And I think still in 2024, we see a lot of the funding, a lot of the industry news, a lot of the energy around the journalism, which is great. We certainly need more collaborative journalism. There's a lot of journalism training, you know, we need, and new technologies and particularly as AI is evolving. But the fundamental crisis is from the business model, and I still don't think it's getting the attention it deserves, the research it deserves. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that from your view and, you know, how has academia been approaching business model questions? Is that, is my perception of maybe it's being under researched true, or do we just not see it out in the industry? 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:16:19]: So I think there's a—this is Pat again. I think there's a few different things there. So it's probably under researched a little bit, but I also think it's an incredibly hard thing to research in, so one of the things—so let me take a step back before. So one of the things that really excited me about this project that, you know, Teri kind of put together was that I do a lot of work where I just think or talk about different business models or revenue streams, and you talk to a place that has it. Well but it's really rare in our field, at least, that we get an opportunity or people have a want, like Teri did, to actually take this theoretical work or even just some empirical work, but only about specific places, and put it into action, right, which is what this did. I think the hard part about studying business models, which we do a lot of at, like the not not the rural type places you're talking about the local news. The hard part about studying business models at these, at this really local level is that these places are lean. They don't experiment with business models because if they do and they fail, they go out of business. 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:17:34]: Right? And change in journalism is, regardless of place, has always been difficult. So a lot of the places that we're talking about haven't experimented with business models, and therefore, it's really difficult to study it. The places that experiment with business models are like, you know, the new digitally native news nonprofits or co-ops that all happen in the areas you're talking about, Tim. So that was one of the challenges we faced with, and that goes to the survey that you asked about earlier. It's like, we need to figure out what are these people willing to do before we try to figure out what we can do? Because even with what we did, we could have done a lot more, but that just wasn't gonna happen. They're too lean. Right? And I think that goes to the issue. It's hard to study something that actually isn't happening very much. 

Take my money, please: Reluctance to change 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:18:23]: Yeah. And I think this is probably a good time for Nick, who wrote the focus groups chapter, to talk about that and how that informed the project before I talk about how we did get Newton newsroom to work with us. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:18:35]: Yeah. I mean, that's what I was just thinking too. I mean, because it's not just that they're not doing it. It's, they are just so unwilling to do it. And so there is very much a hesitancy because we might fail kinda thing too, but there is very much, you know, stuck in their way of looking at this just as even almost the easiest kinds of ways to do it. So, I mean, a classic example is a conversation from we were talking very specifically about, possibilities of philanthropy within local news and that as a possible screen for them. So these we're talking about news organizations who have people who want to give them money, and they don't wanna take it because there is, could be a perception of influence of the editorial product or something along those lines. So it's just as fundamental way of not actually being able to think about how their, how important their role is in their communities. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:19:41]: I mean, they're even talking about from philanthropy standpoint, they were like, no. No. No. No. We don't want your money. Give it to somebody else because they might need it more. First, like, okay. Your news organization is incredibly valuable just as Teri described in the very beginning, especially with COVID. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:19:55]: Your news value, your news organization continues to show its value. Your community wants to support you, but you don't wanna find a way for them to help give support as well because you're so stuck in your ways, about using advertising as a main app revenue stream. I mean, so that specific conversation was so jarring and so alarming to me, that really kind of helped fuel a lot of the work that I think we did. Now, I mean, to a point, the, you know, the case study that we did in Newton, Kansas, they were not necessarily at that time in favor of having philanthropy in their newsroom either. That was something that we, that Teri should talk about here in a second as well as a segue. They were not in favor of that. Now I have talked to Joey and Lindsey. Now we're probably, what, a year away from when we did the project or the experiment with them. They're changing their mind again. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:20:50]: Yeah. You know, so when I do a lot of public speaking about this topic, and I always, always start, because I'm a journalism historian, with history of how did we get here in the first place. Because if you don't understand that, you don't understand anything. And so I always start everybody in 1833, which is the year that the penny press model started. Before then, newspapers were very expensive. They were 6¢ and only business people, you know, the wealthy really could afford them. When this penny press model started and this concept that we work under today that news should be extremely cheap and widely available to the masses, you have to think that this psychology has been in place for almost 200 years now. We really haven't changed much. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:21:38]: Now, obviously, the Penny Press model did not just like not everybody was doing it overnight. Right? It took time throughout the 1800s for it to catch on. But, I mean, really, for 200 years, we've had this mentality, and then as Nick was talking about with advertising, the industry has psychologically tied the business model to objectivity, making it very difficult to break through the psychology and change. And so, I try to make both readers as well as publishers understand, in 200 years, my God, the bread industry has evolved more than we have. We're literally charging 99¢ more than 200 years ago. I helped a newspaper in North Dakota recently write a column. The Bismarck Tribune was selling for 5¢ during the Great Depression, and today, that newspaper was charging 87¢ a issue, and it's, like, literally in a 100, almost 90 years, your pub, your newspaper has gone up one penny per year in how much it costs. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:22:49]: When you say that out loud, it's absolutely ridiculous, but we have so devalued ourselves as journalists and tied up our psychology and that we should just be dirt poor. The only thing we should be able to afford is coffee and cigarettes. We have to get past this. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:23:07]: Absolutely. And, you know, one of the—that was one of the striking things for me because I deal with publications all the time and I see reluctance, but I think a lot of Colorado newsrooms have jumped into the donation piece as NewsMatch, and Colorado Media Project did a statewide version. So that reluctance seemed to be breaking down largely here, but I was surprised that the, it was almost, it was overwhelmingly people were opposed to that idea. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:23:35]: Oh, that I mean, the philanthropy in particular, that's why I wrote extensively about it in that one chapter just because it was so jarring how much they were vehemently against the idea, I mean, from a variety of perspectives, perception being one of them. But, I mean, it was just, it was really, really jarring to see or to hear. 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:23:56]: But that's also, Tim, and this is Pat again, that illustrates the differences between states. Right? We have a lot of rural publications in Colorado, especially in, you know, the west and the east and really there. But the difference is that when they come to CPA, right, the annual we have all these Denver and Boulder and other more rich places that can say, oh, look. We did this, and look at the great results. And so the willingness to do it happens a little bit more. The affluent front range of our state is not in North Dakota. It's not in some of the places where our focus group were represented. 

Disconnects between the business models readers want and what publishers offer 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:24:39]: The other striking thing was the disconnect between what newsrooms how they ranked revenue streams that they would consider and what audiences want. So maybe you can talk a little bit about what were the revenue streams that you defined and how the differences, how different they were from what the readers were saying they wanted. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:25:02]: Yeah. I mean, that was really eye opening to us, I think, although it probably shouldn't have been surprising. But when we asked what models are you open to? I mean, there wasn't even a contest. The publishers picked the 1800 model that they have always known. Very few people check the boxes on other things, whereas you had an opposite reaction from the readers. They were interested in more contemporary things, like memberships, events, e-newsletters. Now readers in these rural areas still very much prioritize the print newspaper, so that was, you know, on the same wavelength. But as far as how they were willing to give money was just completely different. 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:25:46]: I also wanna stress, and maybe we'll get to this, but like Tim, I think when Joey and Lindsay spoke at CPA, and I'm sure when they've spoken at other press association things, you saw like a different mindset. Right? Some of this reluctance to change and focus on different revenue streams. It's built into them to think of the newspaper as a business that's funded in this typically capitalistic way. And their function is to give information that's valuable to people and whatever. When you hear—and that makes sense. Right? Journalism should have its valuable information, all that stuff. But when you hear Joey and Lindsay talk, and I would argue what most local news places should think about, is they're more than that. Right? They're a community institution that holds the community together. 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:26:33]: And if you think about them as more of a community institution and put the journalism second, not that that's exactly what we should be thinking about, but that's somewhat the function they serve now. That tells you that they're a little bit different than these prehistoric notions that Teri was talking about, and maybe that opens up or takes away some of the reluctance to seek funds in a way that most community organizations seek funds. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:27:00]: Right. You know, so we ended up choosing Joey and Lindsay Young from Kansas Publishing Ventures just almost by chance. So I didn't really know Joey at the time. So I was submitting my grant application and was like, oh lord. You know, I need a newsroom here that I can put down because we wanna actually do this experiment, as Pat said earlier, not just create a hypothesis or a theory. And I had run into Joey a couple times at the Kansas Press Association and knew enough that he was different from everybody else who was there. I could tell well, first of all, you know, he was much younger. He's a millennial publisher, which is unique in itself. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:27:43]: But he was very open to trying new things and wasn't really tied to how things had always been done. And so I'm not kidding. I literally called him up, and I said, Joey, I'm gonna want you to try a new business model. I have absolutely no idea what I'm gonna ask you to do, but are you in or are you out? And he didn't even hesitate. He said, I'm in. Like, he had no idea what we were gonna make his newsroom do, and he automatically said, I'm in. And then I said, okay. Well, we're gonna give you $10,000 to be part of this experiment. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:28:16]: We're gonna give $5,000 so that you have an intern who can take some workload off while you try this for us. And but, I mean, even before I really let him know about the cash incentives, there was no hesitation there, and that is just extremely rare in our industry. 

Why newspapers are reluctant to change 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:28:34]: And before we delve into what you actually did there, let me talk a little bit about that reluctance to change. Because I think the, what you write up and the quotes you get, I think does a good job of explaining how they're seeing things. You know, it's easy for, you know, those of us who aren't in those situations to criticize them for being slow to change and all of that. But you walk through some of the challenges they face and why they're reluctant. And I think that's important to understand because it's not completely irrational. It's just it's short term, and it's gonna kill them if they don't evolve. Right? But why, where does that reluctance to innovate and experiment and change come from? 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:29:20]: Just from, like, traditional organizational or management theory. Right? These organizations are built to do a certain thing. They have they've hired to do a certain thing. They have processes, technology, all of these things to do a certain thing. You can't just make a small change and assume that all of these people and processes that were hired to do a certain thing can now do this other thing. They don't have the expertise. So forget journalism. This is anything. 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:29:48]: Right? If Coca Cola decided tomorrow to become Taco Bell, you just can't. I just pulled that out of my butt. That was good. They can't. Right? They have people made to make soda or something. I don't know. Right? You just can't do—it's not as simple as, oh, journalism needs to change. Why aren't they changing? Especially these rural places that aren't corporate owned and they're run by generations of family. Right? It's not as easy as we think. Sorry, Nick. You wanna jump in here? 

NICK MATHEWS [00:30:17]: Oh, no. I mean, no. That was, that's really good. I mean, and it's yes. There are reasons why people can be reluctant. Some of these newsrooms have one person in them. That is tough to be innovative when you are covering city council, you're covering county board, you're covering all the educational. It is difficult to do. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:30:36]: We get that. I mean and so in many ways, it's actually just the personnel that is probably the biggest hurdle, which makes complete sense. But even if you're in a one or two person newsroom, you can potentially find freelancers who might be able to cover those meetings for you for a week or two or occasionally, where you can think about things a little bit more holistically. And so that's where, and it's difficult when you're in the weeds. It is. We, I mean, I worked in newsrooms for 20 years. I mean, it's very difficult when you're in that minute to minute, not only day by day, but minute to minute where you are making editorial decisions. It is difficult to think about your business holistically. And so that's where we were able to kinda help Joey and Lindsay in that space, and hopefully help inspire others as well. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:31:25]: Well and I just really think that—I mean, KU made us sign a contract with Joey. So, I mean, we had that, but we didn't really, you know, pay much attention to that. I think the more critical thing for Joey and his team is they had accountability with us. Like, they knew we were gonna be checking in with them. We did oral histories with them, you know, every three months, six months, whatever. Right? And so then they had more pressure, like, oh, we better keep going because we're gonna have to report on what progress we made. They had mentoring. They had support from us. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:31:55]: Right? And we're friends with them on Facebook now, so it was really easy just to drop a line. Hey. How are things going? And to just offer that moral support is also really important. I mean, I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but I'm expanding the experiment with two other newsrooms now, one in North Dakota and one in Nebraska. I've given so many talks about our book, you know, as the boys have as well, but, you know, people aren't really taking it on because it just—I think it's too much for them, whereas I'm serving as a personal consultant and mentor for these two newspapers. And by having that, now they're actually doing it. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:32:29]: Yeah. I think that's a great point and point, you know, as we have all of these support organizations that have sprung up and we're getting all of this grant money, and it's gonna take that kind of mentoring and one-on-one and hand-holding to get these organizations there. I don't think it's just about, oh, here's a check. Now go innovate. Right? 

NICK MATHEWS [00:32:51]: Well and just as much though, Tim, I do think it comes down to a willingness to do it. You know? I mean and so Colorado Press Association, the Missouri Press Association, Kansas. Kansas is doing great work. You're I mean, you're talking about, like, Press Forward, who's giving a lot of play at the media within local news, not necessarily the local news organizations, traditional ones. But, I mean so there's a lot of support out there. You just kinda need to be willing to say, you know what? Maybe I could use a little bit of help. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:33:22]: Yeah. And part of that reluctance too, I mean, I agree time and, you know, mental capacity sometimes is the biggest obstacle, but there's also a rationality in the short term to it. You know, to Pat's point about the sort of the organization, the theory of it, you referenced Clayton Christensen. And, you know, if you really read, particularly, the first Innovator's Dilemma book, it's not a rosy picture for legacy organizations. He almost says it's impossible. You have to spin up a skunk works team because the pull of the legacy group is so strong. And one of the things that comes through in the book is there's a certain rationality to that because not only do you have your organizational structures there, but it's where your money is coming from. Right? Like, why am I gonna spend all this time doing an event and a newsletter, putting more time into a newsletter when 80% of my revenue is coming from advertising and the other, you know, 15 of the remaining 20 is coming from circulation. And I don't know if it's gonna work, and I don't wanna jeopardize the cash cow that's dying, but that cash cow that is keeping me afloat. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:34:29]: Now one of the things we should probably mention here, though, is that Joey and Lindsay and their team kept their current business model. They didn't just, like, throw it all out the window and just rely on, you know, ours to survive. They did both at the same time, and they changed, as Pat was saying, their processes and their thinking to incorporate this new way of thinking into what they were doing in order to bring in more revenue.  

Revenue models and returning newspapers to their role as community institution 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:34:55]: And so why don't you, Teri, talk a little bit about how that proceeded? You know, the Press Club, the thing that came about, what were the elements and components of that? 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:35:06]: The results that we had from the survey were the memberships, e-newsletters, events, and donations that readers felt very strongly about. Now we had 40% of readers say they would be willing to give donations. And, everyone went, well, 40%. That's nothing. Well, that's 40% of people willing to give you free money. But when we had our very first meeting with Kansas Publishing Ventures about that, as Nick said, they were so adamant. They did not wanna do donations that we had no choice but to take that out of the business model because if they weren't gonna do it, what was the point? But they were very excited and intrigued by the other concepts. And they started you know, as we were getting this survey data, I was kinda filling in Joey how things were going. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:35:54]: So they kinda jumped the gun a little bit and started on the Press Club concept, before we even really finalized it. But they were really excited about this concept of, you know, we're a millennial staff. There are other millennials in our town. There's really nowhere for them to go. The chamber isn't really filling this role. Like, this is a hole in our community that we can fill. Now when you think back again to journalism history, when towns were forming out here in the western states, I mean, a newspaper or a bar were the first things that established. Right? Like, you weren't a real town without a newspaper, as Pat was talking about earlier. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:36:30]: And, Nick, we filled this critical community institution role. And so by having this Membership Press Club program, it's really getting newspapers back to their history when things were really successful, for us and making us critical assets to our community. And so they were really excited about starting this program to bring in more revenue, to have these social events, have people feel kind of exclusive, like they were Press Club members. The e-newsletter is something that they had sort of tried before, but hadn't really put a lot of time into. So we got them some training. Again, this comes to mentoring to help them think about how to improve that. So having kind of this structure in place for them to follow really made it easier. Now one thing, you know, we talk about really the success of this. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:37:21]: One thing we should talk about more is, our intent was they were supposed to do this in two communities. So they did this in Newton, which is 20,000 people, and they were supposed to do it in Hillsborough, which was 2,000 ish people. And now looking back in hindsight, just trying this in one newsroom and changing it is enough. Like, trying to do two at the same time is too much. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:37:44]: And that just kinda reiterates something that Pat had said too. You know, if there I think there's something like 20,000 communities in the United States with less than 20,000 people on it. There, so there's not one solution that can be replicated 20,000 times. There are 20,000 solutions here. And so that is a hard thing for us to write in academia, but it's also a hard thing for news organizations to understand as well. 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:38:08]: And that's, I think, kind of the key to doing more of this work. Like, I think all of us are involved in some ways of trying this out in different places in different ways, because the more data we can gather about how this affected different newsrooms, the more, you know, for lack of a better word, systematicity or something like that. Right? Like, okay, this works in this kind of newsroom. This didn't work in this kind of newsroom. Because, again, while all of them are different, they're not all different. Right? There's certain characteristics that are in certain newsrooms and not in others. And so if we can kind of put all this data in a place where we can make these kinds of connections overall, it maybe provides a little bit more assurance to places on the fence about trying stuff that this is how we do it. And then this also, and this worked in this way and that way. 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:38:59]: And this also goes to, I think one of the key pieces that when Teri was pitching this project to me, which is what got me excited is this idea that over time, right, this book or any other stuff like public facing documentation where we can give these places that not that haven't done this almost like a cookbook. Right? Like, this is the step to do these things, and how to do them and how and so you don't need, maybe more hand holding or whatever, if that makes sense. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:39:32]: Yeah. And that and that difference between Newton and Hillsborough was enlightening. You know, I think everybody, people tend to, I think, fall into two camps. One is I'm just gonna take something and copy it and think it'll work, or that'll never work here and they never even try. And I think I suspect the components when they do go into Hillsborough will probably look largely what they did in Newton, but that it'll be different in the nuances and the timing and the shape it takes will be different. But the basic idea, you know, will probably still be some of the same components. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:40:05]: Well, the types of events that they do might be different. You know? If they're, you know, for instance, if you are in a pretty conservative type of community, maybe you're not gonna have people that have drinks in your office. You know, I mean, it's just maybe you're gonna do something that is more cooking oriented or baking oriented or something like that, but—and that was kinda the things that Joey and Lindsey had learned. Newton was very hungry for a kind of place that you can have that normally would have been done by, like, a business group or a chamber group or a junior professionals group or something like that. That was missing, and they filled it in their community. That specific model was not going to work in Hills, and they learned that pretty quickly. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:40:50]: Yeah. And that focus group experience for them was also interesting. You know, they found that out by having that focus group and realizing how much of an outsider they were perceived. I mean, this is a very small chain, you know, of three newspapers, I think, at four at one point. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:41:08]: You know, Tim, to that point, that was—this whole experience, one of the things that was so interesting to me was when Teri and I did that group panel with the audience members from Hillsborough. One, I was so impressed with the fact that Joey and Lindsay sat there and took it. They were willing to be in a room with people who frankly were not very big fans of theirs, and they were able to sit there and listen and learn, and that was incredible to see them do that. And then the second point was really that, I mean, the fact that Joey and Lindsey lived maybe, I think it's 12 miles away, 15 miles away. And then they were considered outsiders, even though they, you know, they own the paper, they come to Hillsborough, like, once, twice, if not more than that, times a week, and yet they were still considered the outsiders. That whole thing was super interesting to see. 

Raising prices as an imperative for many community newspapers 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:42:07]: Let's talk a little bit about the price. One of the things they learned about pricing, and when they visited and were at our board dinner, I think, Pat, you were there, and they talked about that in particular, which was kind of funny because they were sitting next to someone from a major chain. And it was kind of surprising to me as well hearing them realize what a revelation it was that they could raise their price significantly. Because anybody who lives in a metro, particularly with a big chain, they've been on this Mather Economics, you know, ladder for years, and, you know, I've heard of people paying thousands and thousands of dollars for their daily newspaper subscriptions and, you know, going from $300 to $1500 over a relatively short period of time. By the way, Mather would say that's an abuse of their methodology. But—and so he was talking about the revelation of they, hey, we can raise our price, right before someone from one of these big chains. Like, yeah, my owner has no problems with raising prices. But talk about the specifics. So before you started Press Club, they had raised their price. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:43:13]: I think it was, what, from 40 to 60. And then they brought in the Press Club, and then they ended up raising it overall. So talk a little bit about what you saw them going through that revelation that maybe there's more value here that they're leaving on the table. And when they did the, when they calculated how much it actually cost per subscriber and what they were charging, that was an eye opener for them. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:43:41]: Right. I mean so your exception is certainly not the norm anywhere else. I mean, everywhere you look, it's, you know, 99¢ for six-month’s subscription. I mean, we have just, like, bottom barreled ourselves, desperation. I mean, it's the complete opposite of what we should be doing. And so, again, it goes back, like, to the psychology of this industry. Like, please give us pennies to operate. Like, we've completely devalued ourselves and our work. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:44:10]: And so Joey and I in that first year when we started the experiment with him, we were on a lot of Zooms giving a lot of talks to different people around the country, and we were kinda like a two ring circus. Well, I, you know, I was, started out giving the context and the history, and then he would talk about why he wanted to do it. And so Joey heard me over and over again say, Andrew Jackson was president when this business model started. One penny, penny press. You're making 87¢ an issue. And it literally was, like, 10 months of, like, hearing me say this over and over again, when their newsroom had this meeting, during a May meeting and be like, you know what? Maybe we should raise our prices. But, I mean, Nick can talk about this more because he wrote that part of the chapter. Yeah. I mean, it was really stressful for them to still do that. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:45:05]: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. They, you know, it was to a person a very uncomfortable decision, even after they made the decision. I mean, they had talked to, not to speak too out of turn for them, but after they made the call and they were gonna do this, there might have been a few beers dragged. So, I mean, they were really anxious about seeing how this was gonna go. Even for the week or so after, they kinda delayed a little bit before writing the story, explaining their decision to the audience as well. I mean, but the thing is, like, I was so impressed with, I mean, there is that part of it. No doubt. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:45:40]: They were anxious. They were worried about it. But the thing is that this experiment taught them is the connection and value that they had in their community. And that really came in many ways from the monthly mingles that became a part of Press Club. They had, so they did on a monthly basis. They had gatherings with community members either in their office or at another business in the community as well. I mean, Teri and I were at their first one. There's probably 75 people in their newsroom. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:46:08]: I mean, it was packed, and it's not a big place. It was a really, it was awesome to see. And so they, this is an opportunity to really get to know people in their community. And almost a side after-effect is there—occasionally you're gonna get some good story ideas out of that too. But it's also, it just became, it allowed them to see the appreciation, and I love how Joey described it. It was, he said, we learned who our fans were. And so it was really thinking about people who in their community who cared about them, and they understood that there was enough people about this that could maybe make this really difficult decision to double their subscription. I mean, Teri's talking about pennies a year kind of thing. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:46:50]: They doubled it. That's it, it's just they understood that print costs are only going up, personnel because they were gonna make the decision. We either have to think about going online only and eliminating the print product. Joey wrote a column about that and readers hated that idea. So now we're gonna have to think about other ways to do this. Joey had very, Joey and Lindsey had very clearly said, we are not cutting personnel. We are going to keep, we are gonna pay our staff fair wages for what the value is that they bring. So we're not gonna do that. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:47:27]: How are we gonna actually make this work? We need to get more money from our readers. And so reader revenue is very much where they were putting their focus to, including the doubling of subscription, but also hosting events and stuff that they could potentially get revenue from as well. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:47:43]: I was just gonna say quickly, you know, one of the things that was also important is a lot and and, yes, Joey, did a lot of columns on the editorial page, but when they made this decision, it was the A1 centerpiece. It was out front explaining it costs us three dollars to publish an issue. They put in the, they put in the paper his and Lindsay's salary. I mean, they were extremely transparent. We just, we demand transparency from everyone but ourselves, and they just laid it all out there. 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:48:12]: And I was just gonna say this is implicit in everything Teri was saying with the idea of the penny press and the model that journalism has been using. But just to say it out loud, like, this is also a mindset change. Right? This is changing the idea that, you know, in the vast history of American journalism, people only indirectly paid for journalism. This is about people paying for the actual product they're getting, right, or the service they're getting because we've never done that. That's not the way this works. So it's a huge mindset change. It's more than just changing a thing. It's also changing the public's understanding of what journalism is and that it's worth something. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:48:59]: Yeah. And you're—you know, this also makes me think of really understanding the value you provide to a community, and we are so trained to think about that at the article level. Right? So you just gotta keep cranking out more and more articles, you know, coverage. But there's a business writer named Ben Thompson, publishes a blog called Stratechery. And he did this, was six, seven years ago now, and he occasionally talks about local news, not very often. He's mostly covering massive, in this massive companies. But he talked about, you know, the value of local news is not in that article. Right? It's in the information. It's in the information you're getting about your community and how you feel about your connection to the community. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:49:46]: And sometimes maybe the best thing a local publication could tell you for the day is, hey. Nothing you need to be concerned about. Like, you know, part of you just wanna feel informed about the important things that you wanna keep track of. And I think that goes to your point about they're not just journalists, they're community connectors. And I think thinking of our jobs is not just writing that story, but connecting people, convening people, introducing them to the new business in town by having an event at that business is a value that a newspaper is perfectly primed to do. 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:50:24]: Well, it's also something that they need. Like, going back, you know, what are we, 25 years out from the Putnam, Bowling Alone kind of argument. Right? That these institutions, these community connectors are becoming far less, for a whole variety of demographic and economic and cultural reasons, far less prevalent. And so newsrooms have to under—or news organizations have to understand that they're shifting roles. Right? They’re, and they've always been, shifting roles of journalism. But community connecting and providing that bridging kind of social capital. Right? That and both and bonding. Like, that's important. It's again, it's the Putnam argument just made to journalism. 

The importance of both print and e-newsletters in rural communities 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:51:09]: And there are benefits for journalism which came up in the case study here. Right? Like, they got tips because they got to know some people who came to these events. I wanna go back just briefly to talk about something, Teri, I think you mentioned the print publication was something that was valued by readers. And I, when I talk to, you know, people at foundations or just even sometimes consumers in big cities, they're surprised when I talk about how print is still viable, particularly in these rural communities that it's not, it's not even just a broadband issue. People want that print publication. It's a slower pace. Right? It's a weekly. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:51:48]: It's not, it's not a daily. And you want, you value having that to hold on to, and keep up with things. And that surprises people, but you found that. And even with millennials, I mean, one of the things your research showed in these communities that you surveyed, millennials were actually and then—was it millennials and Gen Z, I think, were more likely to say they had support their local newspaper financially if it's in trouble than seniors were. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:52:20]: Yeah. You know, I mean, there's a host of reasons for this, and we didn't really delve into, of course, why people wanted the print paper. Although, I mean, it would come up just on the side and some of the focus groups, but there's many reasons for it. I mean, online anymore is so filled with garbage and misinformation, and people acknowledge they don't see everything. Whereas when it's in the printed product, like, everything is in one place, and it's kind of less overwhelming, more digestible. It's habit. You know, I'm the founder of the Journalism History Podcast, and so we talk a lot about that. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:52:58]: And when I was doing the episode about Sunday newspapers, I mean, a lot of people, myself included, have strong memories of, you know, grandpa and grandma reading the Sunday newspaper before or after church. Right? There's a familiarity, a kind of a comfort, a sense of connection that you get through print that you don't get in the exact same way as online. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:53:19]: Yeah. And at the same time, your research and experience in Newton showed, you know, people, they want that print publication, but they also want higher frequency news. Right? That's why the e-newsletters were so important. They didn't want every piece of news they were getting to be a week old. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:53:37]: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, especially during COVID, I mean, you saw these rural newspapers forced to give out information more rapidly, and people got pretty used to I mean, they get news quickly from every other place but their own hometown. I mean, I'm from a rural town of 2,000 myself. Right? I mean, pretty much everybody in the coffee shop knew everything. By the time the paper came out, too much of it was irrelevant. And so the most pressing information needs to come in a more timely manner. But those, you know, those feature stories, those enterprise stories, those evergreen types of stories, the Clara had coffee with Bertha at their home on Friday. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:54:16]: Like, I mean, I still read that in my hometown newspaper. Oh, yeah. You know, my high school classmate's mom, you know, she's getting her coffee today. Right? It's just that sense of connection, like, that Pat was also talking about as well that you get that kind of comfort, in that product while still wanting more of a modern vibe through the e-newsletter. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:54:36]: You know, in so many ways to the question you're talking about, Tim, news organizations that have been around for a 100, a 150 years, they are fighting their own history. They are fighting their own history of being a weekly product, and that perception of being only a weekly product, even though they have social media accounts, they have digital accounts, but their audience just thinks of them as a once a week product. And that's why I mean, if you talk to them, Joey and Lindsey will say that the big—one of the biggest things that they got from the experiment was the value of an e-newsletter. It was obviously getting revenue where they're doubling their subscription rate too. But the enewsletter and the frequency of that and having three, or having three or four times that you're sending an inbox, so it changes the perception for your audience, but it also changes your newsrooms. And it gets people to write on a more regular basis because the content's going out. They're not writing just on Wednesday because it's production day. Now they're writing on Monday. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:55:33]: They're writing on Wednesday, writing for it, you know. And so it just changes the mentality to be much more just like a daily newspaper. And so those e-newsletters were foundational in some of the work that Joey and Lindsay have done and built on since. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:55:47]: You know, and I think changing too, changing that mentality, changing your workload and your structure, it's a big mental hurdle, but it's really not that much of a, it's not as intimidating or to implement as it seems when you're going through that. And it's not even just these legacy publications. You know? Pat knows I started a magazine called Paste, and, you know, this was a music magazine largely staffed with 20-somethings. And we were very print centric. That's what drove everything. You know, we were a monthly; we weren't even a weekly. But that deadline, we could not get even 20-somethings out of that, until I think the first we broke some Radiohead news that came out of a print interview. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:56:32]: We were able to break it online first, and then people started seeing, oh, you know, this is meaningful. It's kind of like, you know, the New York Times did their innovation report. And one of the things that you heard about around that time was everything was about A1, what's on the print product, and then people started realizing that mobile alerts were actually a bigger driver of people's attention than what was on A1, and that kind of changed the culture. And so you have to really change that culture so it is not all oriented around that Tuesday or Wednesday deadline for the print product. 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:57:06]: Well, but it's even more, like, just to use Paste as an example, Tim, or just, like, all those bunch of music magazines that happened in the late 20th into the early 21st Century. Right? So many of them, they all had the print deadline. They were sold on these kind of glossy photos and awesome interviews. A lot of times they had samplers inside that people would subscribe to just to get the CD sampler. It's an entire model based on processes and these things. And to just change it, even to change it to where people are, when the advertising and the print is where the money's coming. It's not easy. Right? There's a, it's not just changing the deadline. 

PAT FERRUCCI [00:57:49]: It's changing the entire way people conceive of the organization. And people join an organization because they believe in that conception of when they joined. Changing it changes their identity. It's hard. 

NICK MATHEWS [00:58:02]: Well, and I love that you guys are talking about the music industry and the value of the print product. In a time where Spin's coming back, Creem’s coming back to print. I mean, we're having, you know, the—what Spin was gone from print for, what, 20 years? And now coming back, I mean, it's pretty cool. 

Steps for small publishers: Where to begin with change 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [00:58:22]: And that is a good segue into one of the last questions I wanted to ask, which was, how should small publishers think about getting started? I mean, even Joey and Lindsey, you know, they had three publications and with staff of what? 15 or something like that, which for some publications is gonna seem huge. So if you are, you know, a one or two person shop, and the book does, and Joey in particular gives some broad thoughts. How should they think about that? How do you begin this process that seems so daunting? Change is not easy. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:59:02]: Well, I mean, the first thing I would say is just start with one thing. And the one thing, it needs to be raising your subscription prices. Like, you don't even have to start a Press Club. So, for example, the North Dakota paper I'm working with, I went up there and I did the focus group in the community, and they were really not feeling having mingles. They did not wanna do that. And so as we're trying to think of what Press Club is actually going to be there, again, we calculated they were making 87¢ an issue. And so they took my advice, and they changed their price from $49 to 78. They did that about six weeks ago, and they said we're not going back. 

TERI FINNEMAN [00:59:43]: We're, we have to do this to survive. You just, I mean, I talked to another newspaper in North Dakota, and I mean, it was even worse. I think they were making 50¢ an issue. It's—for the love of god, you know, explain to your readers. Can you survive on 50¢ a week from your customers? This is not feasible in 2024 and having that honest conversation with yourself and your readers. And we, what I've found through all of this, people are so terrified of their readers. It's unbelievable, actually, when if you just explain to them, like, hey. 

TERI FINNEMAN [01:00:18]: You know, it actually cost me $1,000 to send my sports editor to sports tournaments. I mean, these people have no idea. They have no clue. Right? Because we've never told them before that it costs three dollars to put out a newspaper, and this just doesn't work. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [01:00:35]: Yeah. I found that section too where Joey—you know, the transparency involved, like, I think that was such a crucial point. The fact that, as you pointed out, Teri, it was A1, and there's a picture of that in the book. I think a lot of newspapers would be afraid to do that because, hey, we're not the story. Right? We don't wanna put our—on A1. What? 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [01:00:49]: This should just be buried somewhere. Right? Or the bill shows up in the mail. And that's a terrible way to do that. And I also think that particularly, you know, it depends on the publication and your strength, your relationship with the community already. Have those focus groups and get a feel for what are we missing? How are we doing? You know, well, more money could help solve that. Like, you want more of this. Here's why we don't have the kinds of arts coverage we used to or the kinds of, you know, high school sports we used to. I think opening up, having that conversation, I think, is crucial, but I think there's room to just immediately increase prices for almost all of these. I would agree with that. 

NICK MATHEWS [01:01:36]: And then a second step, you know, from there, I think, would be, if you're a weekly publication, would be to do newsletters more frequently. E-newsletters. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [01:01:46]: Yeah. And Newton, they were doing, they started off once a week, and they're up to four now. And it's had all kinds of positive results for them. Alright. Any, any final thoughts? Teri, maybe lead us out with, kind of where you started, which is just the imperative to change, why this is important, not just to survive as a business, but for our communities? 

TERI FINNEMAN [01:02:15]: Look. You know, we have seen a few thousand newspapers close in the last 20 years. That is reality. And they closed because they didn't change. And so it can happen, and it is happening. And so, I mean, I can tell you what. When the guy who invented the Penny Post model was young guy. He was, like, early twenties. 

TERI FINNEMAN [01:02:43]: Right? And I can guarantee when he did that, he did not think that 200 years later, people would still be using this model. Okay? Again, Andrew Jackson was president. I can't say this enough. Okay? So there has simply got to be change. And not only—and we didn't talk about this even though this is really the next big thing, right, for the industry. Not only for today, but for the future because we have so many aging publishers out there who are trying to sell their papers, and all three of us teach Gen Z. And Gen Z is not gonna be in love with some newspaper that looks like it's from the 1800. Right? So innovating is looking to the future, looking to the continuing life of your newspaper and the long term, not just the immediate short term. 

TIM REGAN-PORTER [01:03:45]: Thank you for listening to the Local News Matters podcast. Never miss an episode by subscribing in your favorite podcast player and sign up for our newsletter at lnmpod.com. 

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Past guests on the Local News Matters podcast include: Nic Dawes (THE CITY), Allison Taylor Levine (Local News Initiative Delaware), Crystal Good (Black by God),  Lisa Snowden (Baltimore Beat), Karen Rundlet (INN), Jim Brady (Knight Foundation), Candice Fortman (Exit interview, Outlier Media), Jean Friedman-Rudovsky (Resolve Philly), Jay Rosen (NYU), Sue Cross (Exit interview, INN), Mary Margaret White (Mississippi Today), Amy Kovac-Ashley (Tiny News Collective), Michael Shapiro (TAPinto), Kenny Katzgrau (redbankgreen and Broadstreet), John Garrett (Community Impact), Shannon Kinney (Dream Local Digital), Larry Ryckman (The Colorado Sun),  Frank Mungeam (Local Media Association), Kelly Ann Scott (Alabama Media Group), Sara Lomax and S. Mitra Kalita (URL Media), Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro (National Trust for Local News), Mike Rispoli and Richard Young (via When the People Decide), Sarabeth Berman (American Journalism Project), Rabbi Hillel Goldberg and Shana Goldberg (Intermountain Jewish News),  Lyndsay C. Green (via The Journalism Salute), Rashad Mahmood and Mark Glaser (New Mexico Local News Fund), Christian Vanek and Barbara Hardt (The Mountain-Ear), Dan Grech (BizHack), Zack Richner (Easy Tax Credits), Tracie Powell (Pivot Fund), Dan Oshinsky (Inbox Collective), Linda Shapley (via What Works), Yehong Zhu and Jake Seaton (Zette, Column), Charity Huff (January Spring), Joaquin Alvarado and Dave Perry (Aurora Sentinel), Steve Waldman (Rebuild Local News), Maritza Félix (Conecta Arizona), Michael Bolden (American Press Institute), Jeff Roberts and Corey Hutchins (CFOIC, Colorado College), Eve Pearlman and Erica Anderson (Spaceship Media), Jennifer Brandel (Hearken, Democracy SOS), Corey Hutchins with Bay Edwards, Todd Chamberlain and Raleigh Burleigh (Sopris Sun).