BILL KNIGHT

In news, it’s said, “if it bleeds, it leads.”
That means the hemorrhaging of daily newspaper circulation should be uppermost in people’s minds — to stay informed, if not remain in a democratic society.
The U.S. daily newspaper circulation is about 24.3 million, according to Pew Research. That’s a lot, but a far cry from 1986, when it was 62.5 million.
Locally, five of six area dailies lost about three-fourths of their circulation in the last decade.
That’s according to newspapers’ own numbers in their annual Statement of Ownership forms required by the U.S. Postal Service, which the Illinois Press Association (IPA) uses to determine circulations.
Alphabetically, the Canton Daily Ledger in 2010 had a circulation of 4,453; the most recent report (2021) says 982; the Galesburg Register-Mail had 23,719 in 2010 and last year 3,520; the Kewanee Star-Courier had 4,650 then, and 3,500 in 2021; Macomb’s McDonough County Voice was 5,500 in 2010 and now 1,209; the Pekin Daily Times was 7,957 in 2010, and now it’s 1,742; and the Peoria Journal Star had 66,720 in 2010 and now reports 15,194.
Companies may say digital subscribers aren’t fully reflected in those numbers, but newspapers’ reports of paid electronic copies don’t make up for losses. For example, the Journal Star in its September report said it had 5,568 electronic subscribers, which would make a combined circulation 20,738 — a fraction of 2017’s combined circulation of 37,064 — much less its pre-digital circulation of more than 100,000.
Daily industry concedes there’s trouble
This summer, concerned dailies went public. For instance, the Journal Star and other dailies ran ads appealing for support for the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (S. 673), a bipartisan bill introduced in February. Also, Peoria’s daily on July 24 published an editorial from USA Today, the flagship of corporate owner Gannett, that described the bill as providing “a four-year antitrust exemption that would allow small and local news organizations to work together to negotiate an agreement with Google and Facebook on fair compensation.”
Doing something is vital, like timely local news. Historically, daily papers were a civic benefit, helping create a sense of community, present facts citizens used to debate solutions to problems, hold leaders accountable and publicize how government serves people — or doesn’t.
Without a daily paper, communities become “news deserts” (places with no real local news about all the public affairs that matter). Unfortunately, the number of Americans living in news deserts is reportedly some 70 million of us.
That USA Today editorial said, “Nearly half of all U.S. counties have only one newspaper. Since 2005, according to a recent report from Northwestern University, ‘the country has lost more than a fourth of its newspapers (2,500) and is on track to lose a third by 2025.’ ”
Losses aren’t recent,
but they’ve accelerated
In 1997, when I was a journalism professor, I did a study published in the American Newspaper Publishers Association “Presslines” magazine. Using data from the now-defunct Audit Bureau of Circulation, the analysis showed changes between 1986 and 1996, focusing on greater west-central Illinois. Consider those 1986 numbers: Canton Daily Ledger (7,183); Galesburg Register-Mail (18.887); Kewanee Star-Courier (8,545); Macomb Daily Journal (9,090); Pekin Daily Times (16.072); Peoria Journal Star (99,197).
As far as legislative relief, maybe S. 673 would help. But it’s misleading to exclusively blame tech giants like Facebook, Google or even Craigslist. After all, Amazon’s Kindle and other devices didn’t kill books, because the books themselves — contents readers seek — remain whole in digital formats.
Capitol Hill has had other ideas, like the provision within President Biden’s original Build Back Better measure calling for a payroll-tax credit for local news organizations, or the Local Journalism Sustainability Act (H.R. 3940), introduced last June, also with bipartisan support — two of its co-sponsors include Illinois Congressmen Rodney Davis (R-13th) and Danny Davis (D-7th), or Saving Local News (H.R. 6068), introduced last November.
Further, S. 673 could increase the concentration of ownership, and consolidation has been a factor.
“As private equity firms and hedge funds snap up half of the country’s daily newspapers, they’re emptying newsrooms and disinvesting in local coverage,” said The Nation publisher Katrina Vanden Heuvel, writing in the Washington Post. “Some news deserts harbor a ‘ghost newspaper’ that lingers as a shadow of its former self, absorbed by a larger paper or slashed to a staff you could count on one hand.”
Enforcing anti-trust laws when acquisitions are proposed could help.
Lastly, dailies’ cries for help seem disingenuous. Public appeals imply readers share common interests, but today’s owners making huge staff cuts and largely abandoning coverage that made them their communities’ “newpapers of record” doesn’t serve the public interest.
Surely it’s possible to consider that some circulation losses stem from readers no longer getting what they want.