The life and death of newspapers
Since I work in the publishing industry, I keep a close eye on what the competition is up to although lately, I had quietly placed a couple of Nova Scotia newspapers on a deathwatch. Mostly due to poor management and business structure, I figured that both the Valley Today and the Halifax Daily News could be gone at a moment's notice.
So far now, I'm half right. The Valley Today ceased publishing this week, after less than four months out of the gate. The official story is that financiers could no longer fund the paper, after slow growth in circulation and advertising revenue. There are now 31 people out of work.The fact is, I was actually wrong about this one when it gets down to the reason why. I figured they had a bad strategy from the get go but even I assumed they'd have enough operating capital to make it through at least the first six months regardless of performance. Else wise, why even bother trying? I assumed that the problems would have stemmed primarily from their printing side.
The Valley Today never really understood what they would be or who their competition was. As a paper that served Nova Scotians in the farmlands of the Valley, they felt they were going head to head against the local community weeklies that were already established in that market. They couldn't have been further from the truth. There are people that read dailies, and people that read weeklies. They're largely different readers. The Valley Today sought to be a daily newspaper for rural readers and therefore its competition was The Chronicle Herald, naturally. Nonetheless, they didn't seem to figure that out and in a huge mistake from the onset, they contracted the Herald as their printer.
Now I've seen this happen in New Brunswick. The little guy awards their printing contract to their competitor, often because they can't find or afford their own press, and then that competitor slowly ratchets up the printing price until it becomes unaffordable and the paper folds. That's a very basic dirty trick in publishing but one that even neophytes should know to avoid.
The Valley Today also had major circulation issues. You could hardly find it outside of the Annapolis Valley. Here in Halifax, only one location I knew of carried the paper, and that was Atlantic News.
Another poor planning problem was that in order to be a bit unique, they decided to be an evening paper. Hardly anybody reads the paper in the evenings anymore. They read it in the mornings, avoiding work, before sinking into their routine for the day, or they read it to educate themselves on current events for the day's conversations around the water cooler. By evening, the news is already stale - which led to Frank Magazine nicknaming them "The Valley Yesterday".
Other things stand out now that I see they've folded. Advertising is always a concern, but thirty-one people is quite a lot of employees for such a tiny paper to have if you're not even running your own press. The paper simply wasn't all that big. It looked more like a community weekly than a soon-to-be esteemed daily. It was slim and laid out as a mini-tab. I'd venture that for what the final product was, you could get by with little more than half the staff they had. That wouldn't give you the New York Times, but this was far from the New York Times. The publishers should have been more careful with their money and from the sounds of it, the money of a number of others as well.
On the other side of the province, the Halifax Daily News, like a yo yo, seems to be back into a growth period. Having passed through numerous owners over the past few years, it tends to be greeted with huge investment, followed by huge cuts and layoffs until a new buyer repeats the cycle. It started when Harry Steele sold it to Southam. They sold it to Global and it then passed to Transcontinental. All the while, staff turnover has been utterly insane and each round of cuts seems to leave them with fewer and fewer of the tried and tested. I worked there before going overseas and out of all my former coworkers, I only know of two people that are still there from my days at the paper.
Not long ago, a little birdie told me that it was up for sale once again, as of September. The problem is that they've pretty much run out of credible buyers. Basically, there just aren't that many people left in the market for failing dailies.
Selling is now further complicated because Transcontinental has taken over the web press and set it up in a separate building with their other contract printing equipment and operations. Since it's in a facility with other presses, one would have to tear it down and move it were it part of a sale package, which is a major undertaking.
No buyers stepped up and the same source told me that they had been on the verge of officially folding on January 1st of this year.
But they didn't. They hired a new editor, Jack Romanelli, whom I hear once worked at the Montreal Gazette. They've also created a new mascot for the paper. I guess it's supposed to be a rolled-up newspaper with legs but the cylindrical white body with a tassel at the top makes it look like a giant, walking, feminine hygiene product.
Now this week, we were treated to some huge news that implies that Transcontinental is confirming they're into the Daily News for the long haul. They've announced that they're joining with Alexander Keith's brewery to be "Founding" sponsors for the Halifax 2014 Commonwealth Games bid. The pricetag of that commitment is what first appears to be a staggering half-million dollars.
Now, a large portion of that could be contra advertising agreements, possibly spread throughout Transcontinental's more profitable regional papers, and much more will be made back in printing contracts for Transcontinental, related to the games whether they be signage, brochures, programs, etc. You could also consider from the perspective that $500,000 is small potatoes for a newspaper that consistently loses more money than that each and every quarter, from what I hear.
But 2014 is a long way off, so to make a deal like that we can assume that Transcontinental is planning to hold the Daily News reins for at least another seven years.
Labels: 2014 Commonwealth Games, Annapolis Valley, Halifax, media, Nova Scotia, publishing
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