National Newspaper week was last week and I wanted to make a few remarks to you, my readers about the importance of your local newspaper. Mostly, I don’t have to sell you on that idea. Usually because, if you’re reading this, you’re an intelligent and educated voter.
If you didn’t know, this May I ended my term as President of the South Dakota Newspaper Association. I’m proud of many of the things I’ve done with SDNA, but one I want to mention here was a study our Association did on newspaper readership. This study completely debunked many of the lies that are commonly believed and spread about newspapers, especially people with a political agenda or run a 24-hour cable news outfit would like you to believe.
The first lie we debunked with this study is that nobody reads newspapers anymore, and that everybody gets their news on their smart phone or TV. This is complete bull-pucky.
In South Dakota, the majority of the citizens who live in our communities subscribe to or read their local paper every week. These readers are almost always registered voters. The average age is actually 40 years old, and they’re usually working taxpayers with families and kids in school. This is not to say that senior citizens or younger subscribers don’t reliably make up a solid block of readers, they do. Senior citizens are a solid block of voters catered to by every political party and competitive business and a local paper is a reliable way to advertise your product to them.
As for the younger crowd, many of those folks read their local paper on their smartphone, which we here at the Gazette totally make possible for them to do. In fact, we have households who get both a hard copy and the digital version for whatever technological device they happen to like.
America is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. I believe that to my very core. Can you guess how it stays that way? Constant vigilance. Many people tell you that print is dead. The truth is that the people who want it to be so are usually actively trying to undermine it for their own gain. Those in power don’t want pesky questions about what taxpayer money they’re spending where and why. They want you distracted, looking at the latest shiny thing, rather than the shell game they’re playing. I watch the game, I watch the players, and the team I’m playing for is you, my readers and my community, whenever and however I can. Anybody who lives and works here is my friend and a person I will fight for.
That said, the fight isn’t always easy. Since taking over the Gazette 2015 I’ve seen slow but steady growth every year. Every year, except this year. This year, we’ve lost some subscribers. Some of it is literal attrition, subscribers who I’ve run obituaries on. (It’s about 20 so far, this year was rough). Each of these obits was a friend of the paper, and I read them with sadness, because they won’t stop by or call me on the phone ever again. But a lot of folks on that lost subscriber list are people who just didn’t bother to renew. Many surprised me as people I know and see about town.
These past few weeks as I’ve walked my rounds downtown I’ve had several people stop me, and say thank you. Most of it has been due to the great article my wife did with the Dreckmans about their little boy Carter. That one hit my heart hard, as I worked closely with Luke when I was on the Commercial Club Board, and I feel for him and his family. But the last several weeks, folks have stopped in, stopped me on the street or called to let me know how much they appreciate what we’ve done with the paper since taking it over and that has made me extremely happy and professionally satisfied.
However, I want to warn you all, it’s always under threat, and never more so than right now. Having just filed my annual report, this year’s subscription numbers make me more than a little nervous, and to really spoil the soup here, postal and printing costs have absolutely skyrocketed over this past year. Our bottom line has been affected and this means I have to raise subscription rates this coming fiscal year and also raise my counter sale prices too. My personal salary hasn’t increased at all since 2015 either. And I want to raise Carrie’s pay too, before I raise mine because she deserves it, especially having won several awards for her stories and coverage since she started full time here. I may have a lifetime of experience in this business, but she has a true passion and talent that I am honestly jealous of. When she had to take a week off work from getting the latest COVID variant, I realized how much work she’d managed to take from my shoulders and how much better the paper runs with her than without her. I don’t want to go back to the days of just one full time person on staff. So far, we’re keeping the wolves at bay, and everything paid on time, but this year especially, we’re feeling the pinch. I’m sure that I’m not alone in that.
So, if you’ve let your subscription lapse, maybe re-subscribe? And if you’re really savvy, you should do it before the year’s end, so you can do it cheaper. Maybe buy one for a friend or family member. The more subscribers and the steadier ad revenue we can garner, the healthier the paper will be, and the more likely I’ll be able to keep fighting for this community for the rest of my natural life. -G. Moritz, Editor
