Arkansas Publisher Weekly: November 10, 2022

APA

of Directors

Guest Column:

Trusting readers to be partners

By Rob Tornoe

Publisher Bagley reflects on surprise journalism career

Less than three years after Andrew Bagley and Chuck Davis purchased the Helena World to save it from closure, they are producing an award-winning community weekly.

“The World had just won the general excellence award for small weeklies, which we were very proud of,” Bagley said, speaking of July’s Tri-State Press Convention in Memphis. “To be able to get that kind of recognition so soon after bringing the paper back

from the dead was just incredible.”

Then, Bagley was asked a question – would you be interested in buying the Monroe County Herald in Brinkley?

APA Executive Director Ashley Kemp Wimberley asked Bagley if he would be interested in talking to Herald owner and publisher Hayden Taylor, who was looking for a buyer for the property. “I said ‘Sure, we’ll talk to anybody,’” Bagley said. “We were not even thinking about expansion at that point. Chuck and I went over to visit with Hayden, and we saw a lot of potential.”

The deal was made on Aug. 31, and Bagley and Davis published their first issue under the name Monroe County Argus the same day.

A whirlwind start

Bagley and Davis got into newspaper publishing in 2019 with the purchase of the Helena World from GateHouse Media, now Gannett. GateHouse had announced the planned shuttering of the then-148-year-old World on Sept. 6.

“I think they announced on Tuesday that they were closing on Friday,” Bagley said. “I went to Chuck, who had done a lot in the business world, and he got on the phone and found out who we needed to talk to. The deal for the Helena World took just

APA Media Directory photo contest now open for entries

APA is seeking entries for the 2023 Media Directory Photo Contest. The contest is open to all APA Members, Media Members and Associate Members. The winning entry will appear on the cover of the 2023 Arkansas Media Directory.

“This annual contest brings a lot of attention to talented photographers and photojournalists across the state,” said APA Executive Director Ashley Kemp Wimberley. “We also love showcasing the beauty of Arkansas.”

Prizes include $150 for first place, $75 for second place and $50 for third place. The entry deadline is Wednesday, Nov. 23. Please email all entries to graphics@arkansaspress.org

Bagley and Davis in front of the Helena World

Publisher Bagley reflects on surprise journalism career

a couple of days. It was a whirlwind. The sale was effective Sept. 9, and by the 18th we were publishing a newspaper.

“The thought of my hometown being without a reputable source of news and information scared me,” continued Bagley. “So much would be missed had Chuck and I not been able to save this newspaper. In addition to the coverage of local government, who would run the wedding and engagement announcements, baby shower photos, honor rolls, ballgame write-ups and so forth? Soft news is also important to a community.”

Under their watch, the newspaper launched a new website with a paywall and switched from semiweekly to weekly publication on Wednesdays.

“We went back to an emphasis on local content in the print product,” he said. “It’s about focusing on the local community, by and large. We beefed up the investment and local coverage and now we have a larger local staff than GateHouse had. We put more money into local freelance writers and the proof is in the pudding.”

Moving to Brinkley

Bagley and Davis have now translated their first publishing experience with the World to the recently rebranded Argus

“Monroe County historically had two newspapers,” Bagley said. “You had the Brinkley Argus that was started in 1883, and you had the Monroe County Sun at Clarendon, which started in 1877. So, we went with The Monroe County Argus, as an amalgamation of those two names.”

Bagley reports the name change has been welcomed by the community. “A few people told us they were glad that the Argus name was back, particularly in Brinkley, where of course the original Argus was based. The response has been very good so far.”

The Monroe County Argus was already a weekly, so the print schedule stayed the same, although the publication day changed from Friday to Wednesday. The newspaper was redesigned to give the two sister newspapers a similar brand experience. “We wanted to make sure that

when you pick up both newspapers you know just by the design they are owned by the same company,” said Bagley.

Bringing back comics and the crossword were part of the redesign. Bagley also revived the Opinion page, a feature the newspaper had not had for a while. “We now have local opinion in addition to a political cartoon, which runs in both our papers every week.”

Bagley said he is fortunate they have a good staff. Business, production and editorial duties are shared between the two newspapers. “We have some really good people who are able to put two newspapers in different communities together weekly.

He and Davis have become very good friends through the process of acquiring and operating the two newspapers. “I can’t say enough good things about Chuck taking a chance with me on this project, because he has been a great business partner,” Bagley said. “Chuck

Publisher Bagley reflects on surprise journalism career

has an immense amount of knowledge and a wide array of experience that has been invaluable.”

Wearing two hats

“I am a college professor by trade,” Bagley said. “But over the years I had done some stringer work for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Helena World and the Phillips County Progress, mostly doing sports. In 2019, when GateHouse still owned the paper, the World had me cover some government meetings. Then, in September, they announced the planned closure, and that’s how this college professor got into the publishing business.”

Bagley maintains his teaching position as a professor of history and political science at Phillips Community College of the University of Arkansas in addition to his roles at the newspapers. He feels politics is not much different from marketing.

“In politics, you’re selling a candidate,

you’re selling a message. With the newspaper, we’ve got a product, we’ve got to sell it and we’ve got to get people to read it. I think studying politics and what makes people react to things has been helpful in terms of trying to market the newspaper. We’ve got to balance the stories that need to be told with the stories that people want. We end up with a diversity of content in that regard.”

He feels his teaching career has helped him with his newspaper role in many ways. “Teaching requires you to learn how to deal with a wide variety of people in a wide variety of circumstances and to kind of go with the flow. I think that’s been very helpful.”

Content is key

Bagley has learned what matters most to smaller communities: “The first thing is you have to give people local content. Content is key. Sometimes we have to have internal discussions about whether there is enough advertising to justify

adding additional pages, and I have typically erred on the side of putting in more pages if the content warrants it. That has worked very well for us so far. We have seen circulation double in the threeyear period since purchasing the World.”

Bagley and Davis are just a few months into publishing the Monroe County Argus, but their experience with the Helena World has given them a road map to success, and they are hopeful for the future of both newspapers. Bagley feels online content and advertising, in addition to the print product, are crucial to balance out industry-wide declines in income.

“Staying viable is a challenge every newspaper is facing. The business models are being forced to evolve. Print is going to always be important, and print advertising is going to always be the foundation, but we do have to diversify.

“We’re putting additional content on the website; but again, it gets back to quality content, no matter how it is delivered.”

Board of Directors election results

Three new members were recently elected to the APA Board of Directors, with two sitting directors re-elected.

Brent Powers, president of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Fayetteville, Wesley Brown of the The Daily Record in Little Rock and Jeremy Gulban of CherryRoad Media, which owns newspapers in Berryville, Cherokee Village, Corning, Eureka Springs, Flippin, Marshall, Piggott, Pocahontas and Salem, were each elected to serve their first terms as directors.

Jennifer Allen, owner and publisher of the Hot Springs Village Voice and Robert Schirmer, owner and publisher of the Nashville News-Leader elected to the board.

President Lori Freeze of the County Leader in Mountain View, Vice President Eliza Gaines of the Democrat-Gazette and Immediate Past president Ellen Kreth of the County Record in Huntsville were not up for re-election. Former Director Freudensprung resigned to take a position in another industry.

APA seeks information on industry deaths

One of the goals of Arkansas Publisher Weekly is to be a repository for historical information and important events within the Arkansas newspaper industry. As such, the Arkansas Press Association often relies on members to let the association know about job transitions, newspaper updates and deaths within the industry.

Readers who are aware of someone who passed away and had connections to the Arkansas newspaper industry should email APA at info@arkansaspress.org

Fall Mini-Conference

faculty adviser for the award-winning student newspaper, The Echo, will moderate the discussion.

Claire Hudnell, a student at Lakeside High School in Hot Springs, will share her award-winning video about a student with vision issues. Hudnell won first place in the Arkansas Press Women high school communications contest, and received first-place honors in the National Federation of Press Women contest.

Arkansas Press Women, an organization for professional and student communicators, will host a one-day conference Nov. 12 on the University of Central Arkansas campus in Conway.

Journalism students from UCA’s School of Communication will kick off the conference with a panel discussion. David Keith,

Roby Brock, CEO of Talk Business & Politics, will be the luncheon speaker. Brock will discuss the results of the 2022 midterm elections. Talk Business & Politics is a 23-year-old multi-media news organization reporting on business and politics in Arkansas.

The cost to attend is $20 for professionals and $5 for students. Register by emailing arkpresswomen@yahoo.com as soon as possible.

Registration fees can be paid at the door by either cash or check.

A

THROWBACK THURSDAY

Media Directory photo contest dates back to 2003

by Joel Rafkin of the Times Record, Fort Smith; “A Time to Remember” by Brian Sanderford of theTimes Record, Fort Smith; and “Mount Magazine” by Corey S. Krasko of the Times Record, Fort Smith.

R K A N S A S P R E S S A S S O C I A T I O N

Don’t let lame-duck session slow progress of JCPA

Danielle Coffey, executive vice-president and general counsel for News Media Alliance, is urging newspapers to take action to move the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) through the legislature now that the midterm elections are over.

In a letter to the industry, Coffey said the JCPA is ideologically neutral, incentivizes publishers to hire more journalists and protects free speech and press.

“Local publishers work tirelessly to report news and write content, yet Big Tech companies are the ones who profit most from their work,” she said. “This is fundamentally unfair, and the JCPA will bring about much-needed change in support of publishers, who are essential to our communities and our democracy.

“The JCPA is legislation built to level the playing field for small and local outlets to collectively bargain with Big Tech for compensation for the use of their content.”

The JCPA has had successful hearings in both the House and Senate. Most recently, the JCPA was marked up in the Senate Judiciary Committee and voted favorably out of committee on a bipartisan basis to the Senate floor.

Now that Congress is in a lame-duck session, there are only about six weeks left to move the legislation forward, four of which with both chambers in session.

“The time for the JCPA is now, and we have communicated this to Congressional leaders, who remain committed to passing the bill this Congress,” Coffey said. “We are advocating for the JCPA to be moved forward however possible, and be passed into law by year’s end so that U.S. news publishers are in parity with other news publishers who are being paid in other countries where laws have passed around the world.”

Coffey said the most important thing publishers can do now is to let their representatives know how urgently this legislation is needed and how important it is to their publications.

Actions you can take to help the JCPA move forward:

1. Send a letter to the White House using this template

2. Contact your local representatives

3. Join the campaign calling on Congress to pass the JCPA by running this editorial as soon as possible

4. Run ads in support of the JCPA

Trusting readers to be partners

By Rob Tornoe

For the better part of 10 years, journalists have been told that paywalls are the future to funding a sustainable newsroom. Free is out, the funnel is in and pageviews matter a lot less than subscription conversions. What if there is another way? Well, journalists in Chicago are putting that to the test.

In October, the Chicago Sun-Times announced it would be dropping its paywall in favor of a membership model more akin to Chicago Public Media, which bought the newspaper back in January and turned it into a nonprofit. Instead of forcing readers to pony up their credit card to read more than a handful of articles, the Sun-Times is now asking them to voluntarily support their newsgathering enterprise at whichever level they see fit.

It’s not a totally alien concept for a major metro newspaper, but it certainly goes against the grain. Just a handful of medium to large newspapers in the U.S. are owned by a nonprofit, and even fewer have decided to embrace a membership model. (The Philadelphia Inquirer, where I work, is owned by the nonprofit Philadelphia Foundation, but has a digital paywall).

In the United Kingdom, The Guardian has

been asking readers to donate since 2016, and back in July, the company reported it has more than one million digital supporters making ongoing contributions. In a difficult financial year for media companies, The Guardian reported annual revenues grew by 13% and generated a cash surplus of £6.7 million (about $7.5 million).

As The Guardian has shown, a successful membership project isn’t just a subscription by any other name — it’s an editorial mindset that values a strong relationship with readers. It’s a narrow but essential distinction — subscribers pay to access your content, while members join and participate because they believe in your mission.

That’s the mission (and the success) that the Sun-Times hopes to mimic, according to Chief Audience Officer Celeste LeCompte, who moved to Chicago for this job after spending more than six years at ProPublica, where she developed a fondness for its membership model for supporting journalism.

“It’s really taking a mutual approach to what ‘Trust in media’ means,” LeCompte said. “We ask our readers to trust us all the time. We tell them that we report the news fairly and clearly and are doing our best.

Why don’t we trust our readers back?”

The Sun-Times membership program is pretty straightforward. Readers can select to donate whatever amount they can, or they can go with a couple of tiers and get some swag — $5 a month earns them a tote bag, $60 a year nets them a mug, and a limited-edition Sun-Times umbrella goes to readers who donate $150 a year.

“One of the things I think is wonderful about the Sun-Times is there’s so much authentic, long-lived historic community pride in the brand,” LeCompte said, which is true of many metro newspapers across the country. “If you belong to an organization that people are proud to be a supporter of, give them tools for communicating that to their friends, family, and strangers at the grocery store.”

The Sun-Times isn’t doing away with subscriptions for its printed newspapers — they’ll still set readers back $10 a week for seven-day delivery, though the cost is now tax deductible, thanks to the paper’s nonprofit status. And while it is shedding its paywall, by most measures, it was a tough sell in a two-newspaper town.

(The Sun-Times had about 28,000 digital subscribers according to a March 2021 filing with the Alliance for Audited Media,

NiemanLab reported.)

LeCompte said her experience from ProPublica, along with the work at Chicago Public Media, has been that if you give people an opportunity to participate in the mission, set their own price and join on their own, it encourages greater participation from the community overall.

“I’ve always liked it because I think it keeps everybody honest,” LeCompte said. “Do you value this thing? Do you think about it? How could it be better? Are we meeting your needs? It’s all about making sure we’re serving the community, so there’s a real continuum of relationship building that’s happening on both sides of the equation.”

The Sun-Times will have to find out if they have that type of relationship with readers on their own. LeCompte said it isn’t merging with the robust membership program of its sister company, NPRaffiliate WBEZ. The two will remain separate and distinct brands. And the SunTimes won’t have the option of turning to quarterly radio pledge drives as a call-to-

action to readers, but there are options to replicate that approach digitally, including on-site messaging and email campaigns.

“Running campaigns is a really important part of building a membership program. Everybody needs a deadline, not just journalists,” LeCompte said. “On our first day when we launched, we said if we get 500 members today, we will unlock $15,000 from a donor, and we met that goal handily.”

So, what are some benchmarks the SunTimes is looking to hit? LeCompte wouldn’t reveal specific income levels they’re looking to reach, but said they hope to see support levels for the Sun-Times that are similar to WBEZ, where 60 percent of all support comes from its nearly 90,000 members.

One thing this new membership model won’t do is change how the SunTimes covers Chicago. Not only are the two newsrooms not merging, but the collaboration with WBEZ also enables the newspaper to reach a new audience and vice-versa.

Recently, the two organizations collaborated on a joint investigation into the debt residents had acquired from their city water bills. Chicago Public Media was able to muster the resources to organize a series of community action sessions to help educate those impacted.

“It was really a powerful example of how the two brands can collaborate together to do different things where they have real excellence and then build on each other’s strengths,” LeCompte said. “We also did a joint election guide during the primaries earlier this year, and the reach of that was significantly better than we had seen before. We believe we reached somewhere between 20 percent to 25 percent of all voters in that election with our combined coverage.”

Rob Tornoe is a cartoonist and columnist for Editor & Publisher, where he writes about trends in digital media. He is also a digital editor and writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Reach him at robtornoe@gmail. com.

Nov. 17-18, 2022 • Vicksburg, MS

Agenda

Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022

Noon Lunch

1:00 p.m. Welcome and introductions

1:15 p.m. Is print dead or dying? Presented by Bill Ostendorf, Creative Circle Media Solutions

Should you roll back publication frequency? We’ll offer a different perspective about how and why print can still thrive. There has long been an assumption out there that print is a dead end but the facts simply don’t bear that out. We’ll discuss why print is declining, how to reverse it and dispel some myths about print readership. You are part of the solution and also part of the problem. And you don’t want to be the reason print fails in your market!

2:45 p.m. Break

3:00 p.m. Content that will drive your readership. Presented by Bill Ostendorf What the pandemic taught us and how to create a more interesting and engaging newspaper in print and online. If we can create more stories readers want to read, we can increase engagement, which is the key to not only surviving but for thriving in today’s environment.

4:30 p.m. Break and check-in

5:30 p.m. Reception

Dinner on your own

Friday, Nov. 18, 2022

8:00 a.m. Continental breakfast

9:00 a.m. Ideas Exchange

Bring your best ideas for increasing readership and revenue, promotions, expense reductions, and making budget for a chance to win a share of cash prizes.

10:00 a.m. Break and check-out

10:30 a.m. Roundtable Discussion

A time to discuss common challenges and creative solutions with your peers.

Noon Adjourn

Hot Ideas Exchange

Ideas

for making — and saving — money

Title of idea

Submitted by _____________________________________________________________________ Newspaper________________________________________________________________________ Phone Email

Briefly describe your idea

Tell us the results of your effort

What was the revenue/benefit generated?

Use the back of this page for additional comments or ideas. Please enclose samples if available. Send this form and any samples or illustrations along with your conference registration to:

By Mail » ArkLaMiss, 371 Edgewood Terrace, Jackson, MS 39206. By email » mgilmer@mspress.org By fax » 601-981-3676

We will share each of the ideas submitted in a booklet to be presented at the conference.

LAST DAY TO SUBMIT IDEAS IS NOV. 11.

November 17-18, 2022 AmeriStar Hotel & Casino, Vicksburg, MS Room rate: $79 • Call (601) 638-1000 Group code: S11MS22 • Hotel cutoff: Nov. 1, 2022