On June 12, the Centre Daily Times switched to sending out newspapers by mail, instead of delivering them to subscribers’ houses every morning.
WPSU’s Emily Reddy talked with Matt Jordan about the change. Jordan is an associate professor in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State. He’s a critical media scholar and leads Penn State’s News Literacy Initiative. He’s also a host of the podcast “News Over Noise,” which is co-produced with WPSU.
Here's that conversation:
Emily Reddy
Matt Jordan, thanks for talking with me.
Matt Jordan
Happy to talk with you.
Emily Reddy
The Centre Daily Times isn't the only newspaper to move to mail delivery. In our listening area, the Bradford Era also recently made the change. So why are newspapers making this change? I assume it's a money saver.
Matt Jordan
It is a money saver. And you've seen this since 2022. Nationally, this has been happening. As fewer people get the newspaper, the business model of hiring drivers and whatnot to deliver the newspaper in the morning has become less cost effective. And so they've turned to what in many ways is an older model, which is using the post office.
Emily Reddy
The Centre Daily Times was bought by a hedge fund, Chatham Asset Management, in 2020. Are these changes because of that? Not just the by mail, but getting it printed somewhere else, selling the building. Or is it just the newspaper industry, in general, having trouble?
Matt Jordan
That kind of model of local newspapers that have long-established relationships with their community being bought by larger corporations is something that's been happening since the 1980s. Gannett started the model way back then. But it's been kind of hyper-fueled by leveraged buyouts by people like Chatham and Alden Capital. These are people that come in and and it's a great business model for them. Which is that they use the leverage that they have on another newspaper, they buy out the other newspaper, load all the debt onto something else. And then they just fire reporters and figure out ways to streamline production. The only trouble is, they end up usually liquidating the asset that they have, which is a vibrant local newspaper that people want to read.
Emily Reddy
So going back to this by mail delivery, what affects on quality or on what gets reported can readers expect? If any?
Matt Jordan
Well, the one thing that will shift is if the expectation is the news is going to come out in the morning, you know. There's this old idea that the newspaper is to the modern citizen, that kind of a daily prayer in the morning that you do a kind of ritual. And if you have to wait till the end of the day to get the news, it's going to be different. You know, that's going to be a different type of product. And that will maybe change the way that the news is reported. And I think one thing you'll see for sure is if the newspapers are relying on Postal Service to get it out, you're not going to see a Sunday paper anymore, right? Because the Postal Service doesn't work on Sunday. So they'll probably go to a weekend edition. So it's going to change things. That said, I mean, the idea of newspapers using the Postal Service to get the news out is... you know, George Washington wrote about it, Thomas Jefferson wrote about it. They thought that the Postal Service was a valuable public infrastructure that would allow for a free press, which was fundamental to democracy. So it's, in a way, it's the return of an older idea for distributing the news.
Emily Reddy
So the Centre Daily Times had already shifted to that Saturday/Sunday edition. The Altoona Mirror also has that. The Bradford Era just went to Monday's being digital only. My parents, they live in in Tampa, Florida, a much bigger city, but they only get a print paper two days a week. I mean, is that the inevitable future is that newspapers become digital only?
Matt Jordan
I think it kind of is. And I lament that. I mean, I stopped getting the Centre Daily Times a while ago, because it was just so expensive. It was over $100 a month to get the print edition. But I so much prefer looking at it as a print edition, because things that catch your eye when you're looking at it as a big broadsheet are very different. So I ended up reading more and finding out more about what's going on in the community. Again, everything that you hope for in local news is kind of being aware of what's going on. And with just headlines that you pick and click on, your interaction with the news is very different than it is in a broadsheet. So I do lament that end of that paper copy, just because of the way that I interact with it. But I think it's pretty inevitable, given the cost of news production, that we're going to see just more and more digital.
Emily Reddy
What does that mean for people in rural areas, especially with broadband, not always being reliable. Or older people who might not have computers or internet.
Matt Jordan
One of the good things about the Postal Service is that they do deliver to rural communities. You know, a lot of the...say UPS... won't deliver things. And the Postal Service says okay, we'll take it... Because it's too cost prohibitive to get it out there. But again, that tells you about the necessity of public infrastructure to serve things like rural communities that are hard to get to. Broadband needs to be extended in the same way. We have some people in the college working on kind of local broadband initiatives to ensure that in public infrastructure is there so that rural communities aren't underserved by it. But that's... you have to have all those pieces in line for digital to work to those communities, in the way that these local newspapers used to work. America had the most papers of any country in the world for a long time. And they served these small communities really well. And those are the things that are kind of disappearing pretty quickly.
Emily Reddy
Is there a model out there that is working? Or you don't seem to think that by mail is that bad a thing. You know, what could a good future for newspapers be?
Matt Jordan
It'll depend on the function of the post office. I mean, the post office used to underwrite, I guess you could say, the news productions by distributing it almost for free. Second class postage that was in place at the early part of the 20th century, about 75% of the cost was taken on by Congress, who said this is a vital infrastructure in a free press depends on people being able to get it. Over time, especially since the 1950s, the Postal Service has been under pressure to cover all its costs and to not take government funding. And that has kind of increased over the last year. You've seen the price of news distribution increased by 15%. In one year, right. So it depends on what the post office is going to do. If the post office makes it prohibitively expensive to do this, then you'll see the same problems returning. But if the post office takes on more of a public service role, then you have the potential to have the post office play this central role in democracy once again. But it requires the will to do that.
Emily Reddy
So this is pretty new, so I don't know how much you'll have heard about it. But WITF, our fellow public media station in Harrisburg, is being given a newspaper, Lancaster's LNP and, I think, some smaller publications as well. So the Steinman family, who owned the paper, decided not to sell it to a big publisher like Gannett, or a hedge fund. Is that paper saved? Or what are you watching for here?
Matt Jordan
This is something that a lot of folks are calling for across the country, is this kind of notion that the public itself should own the newspaper. And, so, I think that's a great model. And I think it's one that is... you're seeing repeated throughout the country. It usually takes a Steinman family or a local benefactor to say, "I see this. I grew up with this newspaper. I think this thing is a valuable public asset and the community can't survive without it. We're gonna give it to the community." That is a model that I'd like to see expand, and I am hopeful that it will. Because I think that given the cost of providing citizens the information they need to have local democracies work, it can't be a for-profit thing. I think it has to be public media in that way.
Emily Reddy
Matt Jordan, thanks for talking with us.
Matt Jordan
Thanks so much.
