As the purchase by a Colorado-based nonprofit of the Portland Press Herald approaches its three-year anniversary, the bean counters must be in a heavy sweat.
If the internet numbers are any indication the Maine daily is in a death spiral.
The paper in the last week, for instance, has shown pure stagnation on its Facebook page, an indication of what’s going on with its subscription base.
The paper’s Facebook following is stuck at 93,000 but that should be no surprise for a paper devoting more space to high school basketball than to the growing scandals enveloping Maine’s Democrat-led state government.
Featuring news on a Valentine’s Day chocolatier when the state’s governor is trying to hide multi-million-dollar health care and Somali “daycare” scandals isn’t cutting it with Maine’s hardworking taxpayers.
You can fool people for only so long, Carolyn Fox, executive editor of the Portland Press Herald.
For comparison in followers, consider The Maine Wire which in the past week has gained 5,000 Facebook followers. In seven days.
The Maine Wire’s numbers hit 138,000 over the weekend, while Fox’s paper stagnates at 93,000.
Hugh Hewitt, a national conservative political commentator, said in a recent column that subscriber-based legacy papers like the Press Herald are unsustainable in a world of free news.
“The dilemma for legacy ‘news,’ and indeed any written product for which a reader has to pay: There is so much ‘free’ content that it is very, very difficult for a high-overhead text product that depends on subscriptions to break even,” Hewitt writes.
The Portland Press Herald has a problem before it even turns on the lights in the newsroom every morning – the cost of overhead.
The paper is still putting out a print version, which costs a fortune.
Combine that with giving Mainers fewer and fewer reasons to depend on it to actually cover real news and you’ve got a perfect storm.
Even aside from its paid print subscriptions, the paper is still putting a paywall between itself and those who want free news such as The Maine Wire offers.
Clicking a headline on the Press Herald’s Facebook page doesn’t get you a freebie – you’ve got to buy a subscription to then read it.
Along with hemorrhaging paid subscribers, the paper is also losing advertising due to two reasons – a growing lack of readers and the fact businesses can get free advertising on the internet.
The National Trust for Local News, which laid off 50 Press Herald workers not long after buying the paper, is doing some serious soul-searching.
As the company approaches the three-year anniversary of the day it bought a once-successful newspaper company, its accountants must be wondering about the new editor who promised she could turn a profit by writing about high-school basketball’s spring tournament and Valentine’s chocolate instead of real news.
Fox reached an advertising deal with the Maine State Credit Union to buy thousands of subscriptions to the varsity-sports stories until March 1, clearly designed to boost reader numbers via the credit union “sponsoring free access,” as Fox describes it in the promotion.
Her idea of a fire sale.
If that’s not transparent enough, the paper’s top story going into the weekend was the price of Valentine’s gifts.
“Some customers are buying smaller boxes of chocolate,” read the headline on the Press Herald’s lead piece.
The tease to Hewitt’s column says it pretty succinctly: “Legacy media didn’t lose readers, it drove them away.”
