How Are Small-Market Newspapers Responding to Digital Disruption?

In this section we outline some of the key themes to emerge from our interviews with industry practitioners and experts, as we address how small-market newspapers are adapting to the constantly changing media landscape in which they operate.

This analysis is especially important, given that there has been no wholescale exploration of this topic since the Waldman Report in 2011. Yet, as we have noted, the media landscape has changed considerably, as revenue and consumption models have rapidly evolved. For better or worse, the last two decades have brought about a period of digital disruption for local newspapers. By this, we mean that newspapers have been forced to adapt to the now-ubiquity of digital technology in our everyday lives. This has changed reporting practices, information flows, audience reading habits, business plans, revenue streams, distribution mechanisms, and competition.^{57 58}

In talking about digital disruption we don’t attribute negative or positive connotations to this term, but rather recognize that there has been a seismic change within the industry over the past decade, a segment of which—small-market newspapers—has been under-examined.^{59 60} Small-market newspapers are having to address, on multiple fronts, core questions related to their business and content: this includes reexamining their structures and income models, as well as changing the nature of what they do and how they do it.

It’s this story, which touches on business and revenue models, as well as the practice and philosophies of journalism at local newspapers that we explore in the first part of this report.