Dailies digitize as print declines

MONTANA - Nationwide data from the Pew Research Center shows newspapers’ print circulation decreased over 45% in the last decade. With a sample set of Montana daily newspapers showing an average decline of nearly 40% over the past 10 years, publications from around the state have had to alter and expand their business model to maintain their markets. In this article two Montana newspaper publishers will share their experiences with adapting to a new market.

According to Sworn Statement of Circulation reports, daily publication, The Missoulian, saw a bigger decline than the state sample average of 40%. It decreased 69%, going from a print circulation of 28,673 in 2011 to 8,910 in 2020.

Jim Strauss has been the publisher of the Missoulian since 2018. The Missoulian is based out of Missoula.

Strauss explained that there are several factors that have contributed to the decline in print circulation including a reduction in the sampling program and the shift to digital subscriptions.

Sampling programs are a tool newspapers use to entice new subscribers by sending out free copies of the paper. The reduction in these free editions can be seen in the Missoulian’s circulation reports with an average of 2,400 free copies in 2011 and 460 free copies in 2020.

Strauss said they also used to distribute 4,000 papers a day to local schools. Now they provide schools with a password to the online edition.

“It affects the print numbers as you look at them, but it doesn’t affect our paid audience numbers,” Strauss said. ”We’re just serving them in different ways.”

Despite these declines in print, Strauss said the Missoulian has had the best year over year paid circulation growth of any paper in their parent company Lee Enterprises. He said he is proud of their digital growth because they have had better results than markets eight-10 times larger.

While the number of digital subscribers is not reported on the Sworn Statements of Circulation it can be found on a circulation report for the United States Postal Service. An optional section for digital subscribers was added to the report in 2012. The Missoulian first reported its digital subscriber base in 2015 with 1,882 subscribers. The 2020 postal report showed it grew to 5,367.

“Per capita we’re way ahead for other markets,” he said.

In early 2021, Strauss predicted that the Missoulian’s digital subscribers would surpass their print subscribers. It happened in March and Strauss said their most recent circulation results show 8,248 print and 8,947 digital subscribers.

While he believes that digital revenue will eventually pass print, the physical edition is still an important part of their business model and they have no plans to discontinue it.

“People will ask me, ‘How long do you think the print edition will be around?’” he said. “My answer to that is, ‘It’s not in my hands. It’s in the readers’ hands.’”

Another daily, The Daily Inter Lake, beat the state and national average for print circulation although it still declined 21%. It went from 15,339 in 2011 to 12,156 in 2020. Since 2010, Rick Weaver has been the publisher of the Daily Inter Lake, based out of Kalispell in Flathead County. 

He said their overall readership is higher than it’s ever been when considering online readers, especially on mobile devices. The main challenge going forward is figuring out how to monetize digital readers.

In their postal reports the Daily Inter Lake reported 1,634 digital subscribers in 2013 and 2,338 digital subscribers in 2020.

“If you combine our digital readership across all the platforms that we use with our print, we’ve never had this many readers before,” he said. “Of course [Flathead] County’s bigger than it’s ever been too. So we should have more readers, but we haven’t figured out how to monetize the people who go to our free website, even though we do have a paywall [after a certain number of articles].”

For the industry as a whole, he believes that there is going to be a greater push to appeal to digital readers.

Strauss said they are already actively trying to expand the public’s perception of the Missoulian from being exclusively a print format to a variety of mediums including digital articles and videos. 

“We have to change the narrative,” Strauss said. “We know that the advertising landscape is becoming more and more fragmented. We are keeping up with it. We have to make sure that our advertisers know that.”

One delivery format Strauss’ publications employ is sending out an e-edition of the paper to their subscribers’ emails via a pdf. He said the Missoulian website receives around seven million pageviews a month with a large portion coming from the digital reproduction.

“It’s a … format that has stood the test of time,” he said. “It’s a good way to present the news and some people [prefer it] rather than the traditional website, which is also an effective way to do it. But it really serves different tastes.”

Strauss said one benefit of the website is that writers are now able to post breaking news earlier and then progressively update it throughout the day.

“It’s not like 25 years ago when you would get all the pieces in place for the next day’s paper,” Strauss said. “Now in this fast moving environment … we might get three paragraphs out. And then an hour later that three-paragraph story might be updated to a 12-graph story. And by the time the print edition comes out, it might be a 20-paragraph story with a couple more photos and maybe even a sidebar.”

He said one downside to the new structure is that they are unable to schedule in as many in-depth investigative stories with their rapid schedule. While they were able to expand certain sections of the Missoulian in recent times, compared to 25 years ago their staff is smaller.

On the other hand, Weaver said they have tried to continue maintaining good service by making sure their publications appear presentable and are delivered on time.

“Most people in the industry think it’s content, but it’s usually service first,” he said.

One way Weaver has tried strengthening the relationship between the Daily Inter Lake and its readers was by sending a letter series out letting readers know what highlights to look for and how they can submit story tips.

In spite of declining print circulation figures, daily publishers are adapting to an ever-changing landscape and are confident in their sustainability.

In next week’s article, weekly publishers explain how their operations have adapted to modern changes.

Circulation versus Readership

The data collected for this series looked at reported circulation numbers but newspaper publishers often use another metric, readership. The circulation is the average number of physical copies of a newspaper distributed while the readership is an estimated number of readers of those copies. The industry standard for calculating readership is 2.5 times the circulation.