Newspaper employees across, the country from the San Jose Mercury News to the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Monterey County Herald, have reached a breaking point. Last week, they took out ads in print and online in search of new community minded owners to take over their newspapers. And now it appears the company that owns all these papers is willing to sell.
Digital First Media is the nation’s second largest newspaper group. It owns more than 200 papers including the Monterey County Herald, the Santa Cruz Sentinelas well as ten other daily papers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The company declined an interview, referring KAZU to a news release that said Digital First is looking its options which may include a sale of some or all of its assets.
Ken Doctor is a media analyst and author of the book Newsonomcis. He runs a web site under the same name. In a blog post earlier this year, he predicted the sale of Digital First Media’s newspapers. He says it is a sign of the difficulties facing the industry in the internet age.
“The last time American newspapers increased revenue year over year was 2007. We have seen the movement of really 30-billion dollars in newspaper advertising go out of the industry in 7 years. And more than half that is going to Google and Facebook,” says Doctor.
Still, Doctor says newspapers are still profitable. “They have only done that by cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting. The question is, how long can you cut and still have a viable product where readers will pay?”
Julie Reynolds has seen those cuts first hand. She’s a reporter with the Monterey County Herald and member of the employee union called the Newspaper Guild, which is behind the appeal for new community minded owners.
She says over the years, the newsroom has been decimated. “I started 10 years ago almost in December. We had 12 newsroom reporters. Now are down to 6. We lost our entire copy desk. We lost our editor-in-chief and editorial page editor,” says Reynolds.
Digital First also recently sold the newspaper’s offices and plant in Monterey and moved operations to a smaller location. Reynolds says she would like to see new local owners from the community
”I would like to see someone who would invest in more reporters, invest in a local copy desk. It is so important to have people who know the community do that job. So I would like to see someone to put a little money into the future. To try to make it grow rather than shrink,” says Reynolds.
Paul Miller is owner and publisher of The Carmel Pine Cone, a weekly newspaper focusing on the Monterey Peninsula. He once considered making an offer on the Herald, but now says he is not interested. In his opinion, it would take a very special person to buy and run the Herald now.
“Someone with a lot of dedication and a lot of interest and a lot of money. And whether that person exists in around Monterey County, I don’t know,” says Miller.
Miller, who has been critical of the Herald, believes whoever buys the paper will have a lot of rebuilding to do. But he adds that the paper is viable and necessary for the community.
Media analyst Ken Doctor agrees newspapers are necessary. He points to research that shows newspapers are the source for most other media.
"Studies show that 80 to 90 percent of the news whether it is read on commercial radio stations or repeated in Facebook news feeds and Twitter feeds starts with reporters at newspapers,” says Doctor.
He predicts Digital First’s will sell its papers within six months.