What Has Happened To Delivering Timely News
FEBRUARY 12, 2024
With the recent revelation that the remaining staff of the Evansville Courier and Press has voted unanimously to unionize, it is a good time to examine just what has happened to make the once widely honored and trusted industry of journalism reporting fall on a two-decade slide. What was most surprising about the recent announcement was that the Evansville Courier And Press had less than 20 people left at what was once a respected and powerful force in the Tri-State for delivering all the local news promptly and accurately. The easy answer of the internet did it, may be a major contributor to this decline but it is not the only reason for the decline.
Many other contributors are starting with a corporate consolidation of hometown newspapers under the umbrella of Gannett (GCI), a public company with a financial hangover from taking on crippling debt to expand their business. The stock of Gannett has lost 83% of its value in the last five years, making capital formation very difficult. With a market capitalization of only $336 million for the entire company, raising money in the billions is quite a hurdle. This collapse in value has caused Gannett’s excessive cost-cutting measures across the board to be necessary and this is why newsrooms across America from Evansville to every hometown paper owned by Gannett are struggling to generate enough content to be relevant. At one time the Evansville Courier and Press had over 100 plus employees at its Evansville headquarters. Today, there are around 15 full-time employees or less.
The second real issue is that the excessive but needed cost-cutting has been exacerbated by moving the print operation away from the distribution region. When the printing press was shut down and print moved several hours away, timely news reporting was disrupted to the point that the Saturday paper could not report all the local sports from Friday night games. Now the printing is moving even further away, causing a longer delay for a physical paper hurting the relevance of the local news. When a customer can use a search engine to find the news they are interested in, what good is a paper to a digitally capable potential customer? One thing is for sure and that is for a paper to be relevant the printing must be close enough to the distribution area to provide value news on time.
In response to the decline in value delivered news by Gannett-owned papers like the Evansville Courier and Press, there is a movement across the nation for small locally-owned community papers are making a serious effort in looking to create a publishing brand while making a profit with a mission to report local news on time in both print and digital form.
The City-County Observer is poised to assume a leadership role and has initiated some discussions about how to proceed. The recent vote of the staff of the Evansville Courier And Press to unionize tells us that they are not happy with the situation in the paper. A job is about much more than just a paycheck. A fulfilling job does need to pay enough for a comfortable life, but job security is also required.
It has long been on the minds of the founding group of the City-County Observer to consider taking our publication to the next publishing level. Now may be an opportunity to move forward.
Footnote Disclaimer: All data regarding the market capitalization and performance of Gannett was sourced from public information including the website of Gannett.
