Local news is where it's at

There may be no clearer industry example of ‘Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde’ than the newspaper business.
Ask the editor of a large daily newspaper how business is going and the typical response is, “We’re hoping it’s bottomed out and we’re clawing our way back up.” Ask a weekly newspaper editor and you may hear, “What? There’s a problem?”
That’s because this information business is like two ships at sea. The large dailies have already hit the iceberg and are grabbing for the lifeboats. Meanwhile, the weeklies are floating by under their own power, wondering what all the fuss is about.
Local newspapers flourish because of their local content -- births, deaths, engagements, weddings, lunch menus, school news and such. The emphasis is on local news. The late Charles Kuralt said their mandate is to be “relentlessly local.” And editor-author Jock Lauterer borrowed that phrase for the third edition of his book Community Journalism – Relentlessly Local. Because local is where it’s at.
Robert M. Myers, publisher of the Lapeer (MI) County Press, took weekly newspapers to task in a 1962 Time magazine article that proclaimed “The American rural weekly is valueless, lily-livered and moribund. It is run by ‘printers’ who stuff their pages with syndicated hayseed features and eke out a precarious living on job-printing contracts….” Well, Mr. Myers, “hayseed features” and “who went where” must be what people want, because local weekly newspapers are holding their own while the large newspapers are calling for the lifelines.
To be fair, large daily newspapers are waging battle against several forces. Radio and television have cut into what was once a print monopoly of news. In 2007 the New York Times reported that national newspaper circulation peaked back in 1984 with 1,600 morning and afternoon dailies with 63 million circulation. But in the last 30 years those numbers slipped to 1,452 newspapers and 53.5 million circulation despite, as Thad McIlroy reports, nearly a doubling in the size of the national population. But the biggest threat, by far, is the Internet and its features that appeal to the fast-paced, changing lifestyles of today’s on-the-go consumer. Meanwhile, the dailies have arrived late to the dance, and are now trying to catch up on the dance steps. This is taking a variety of forms from free online content to paid portals to all-paid content.
In contrast, the Suburban Newspapers of America reported in 2010 that “Suburban and community newspapers executives report optimism and growth.” According to McIlroy, “The beta results showed that 2007 was a growth year for the community newspaper industry with advertising revenue up .5 percent as compared to the overall industry decline of 7.9 percent” reported by the Newspaper Association of America.
And this growth is not limited to the United States. “Community newspapers are a growing medium across Canada,” reports Community Media Canada. “As circulation at daily newspapers declines, community newspapers are growing, since they maintain their monopoly on truly local content.”
Yes, Charles Kuralt said it best. “Relentlessly local.”
Back in 1951, Wilbur Schramm and Merritt Ludwig wrote, “The extraordinary hold which weekly newspapers have on their readers and the important part these newspapers play in socializing their communities have long been recognized.” And in 2003 Richard Fusco wrote, “Weeklies are a part of the community and readers have an emotional bond with their hometown paper. They see their friends and family and even themselves. Their letters to the editor on local issues are printed regularly. Weeklies are more a living thing and less an institution than dailies.”
And if you don’t believe that, watch the crowd form at the post office each week when the newspaper comes out.