As the new president of the South Carolina Press Association, I am not only concerned about my own survival, but the survival of my
colleagues as well.
Several years ago, I read a story about a daily newspaper in Arkansas that closed its printing press and sent iPads to its subscribers. Their readers could only read the news
paper on their tablets.
Apparently, the experiment was a success. The cost of the iPads was offset by the millions of dollars the company saved in printing costs. Other newspapers have started doing the same thing – including Columbia’s The State
newspaper,
Last month The State announced that they were only going to print three days a week. They encouraged their readers to sign up for digital subscriptions. Some subscribers were offered tablets with The State software pre-loaded. As a long-time subscriber, I received my tablet a few weeks ago.
I am quite familiar with e-editions of newspapers. Our newspaper has produced an e-edition for nearly twenty years. But I’m old school. I still prefer to hold a newspaper
in my hand.
Apparently, I am not the only one who feels this way. Last night I attended a meeting of The State subscribers. The purpose of the meeting was to explain the reasons for the changes and extol the benefits
of reading the e-edition. One of the things that I noticed was that I was among the youngest people at the meeting. I’m 59.
The crowd was not happy about the changes and were quite vocal in expressing their displeasure. In addition, they were even more upset that on the three days a week when The State is printed, it would be delivered late in the afternoon by the US Postal Service. No one at the meeting had any faith in the Postal Service’s ability to deliver the paper on time. (Ironically, as I was writing this, my copies of The State and the Wall Street Journal were not delivered, something that happens 2-3 times per month).
For people who are used to flipping through a newspaper while enjoying breakfast, this was unacceptable – even for the people who were old enough to remember the Columbia Record, which was the Midlands afternoon daily newspaper. That newspaper eventually merged with The State before it stopped publishing in the early 1980s.
Judging from the reaction of the crowd, The State is going lose a significant amount of older subscribers. Younger readers will embrace the changes. The question is
whether they will gain enough new subscribers to offset the people that they lose. They will, however, save millions of
dollars in printing costs
Here at the Carolina Panorama Newspaper (not to mention the Lowcountry Panorama and the new Upstate Panorama), we have no plans to stop printing. I’ve studied the issue, but the numbers just don’t work for us. To offset the costs of the tablets, you have to have thousands of paying subscribers and a multimillion-dollar printing plant that you need to shut down. We are a free weekly community newspaper. Supplying our readers with tablets would cost millions that we
don’t have.
I don’t know how this new trend is going to work out, but we will be prepared. We will continue to print our newspapers as long as possible. But for those people who want to access our newspapers online, our e-edition is available on our websites. If you prefer to listen to the news, you can click on any article on our websites and have the news read to you. Our website is mobile friendly, so you can get the news on any device – regardless if you are using a smartphone, tablet, laptop or
desktop computer.
I wish my colleagues at The State well. For the future of the newspaper industry, I hope they figure out how to make it work. I, for one, will be watching to see what les
sons I can learn.
It’s a matter of survival.
