Fourteen years ago, the editor of a small daily newspaper in Michigan wrote this to his subscribers:
“We are thankful for every loyal reader who pays for and counts on the print product arriving at the end of their driveway. Frankly, you're still the core of our business model. But that model has brought us to three days a week.”
That editor was me, and the paper was The Bay City Times. After 136 years of seven-day publication, it was moving to three days per week in print.
Yes, the economy of that era was brutal – housing market collapse, bank failures, auto company bailouts – and it hit the newspaper industry very hard. But that storm exposed decay caused by another macro trend: The internet.
The internet grew from a curiosity in the ‘90s to an everyday convenience in the ‘00s. The introduction of the iPhone in 2007 made it portable, ubiquitous and eventually indispensable, and it completely changed how people found and interacted with news and other content.
I’ve led news operations through every twist and turn since then, and it’s still hard for me to believe that 14 years have passed. But the proof that we are still evolving came recently with the announcement that Alabama Media Group is going to cease publication of its three print newspapers in February.
"In an effort to try to deliver more news to more folks and follow where people were going, we've made the decision to stop printing next year," Alabama Media Group President Tom Bates told NPR in an article published last week.
Bates is a colleague – Alabama Media Group and MLive Media Group are part of Advance Publications, which has been an industry leader in the transformation from print to digital since those tumultuous days of transition in 2009.
And his words echo what I told Bay City staff members back then, and MLive every year since: We are going to follow our readers and be relevant to them in any format they choose to get their news. Our journalistic mission and mandate is unchanged, everything else is evolving.
You can get MLive news in print, in an electronic replica of print (seven days per week), on our website, on our apps and the mobile web, via our social media accounts and from email newsletters.
This column is not a coded message that MLive is planning to eliminate print; we’re not at this time. It’s a recognition that the transformation driven by technology and user needs continues and that as a business that wants to serve various audience needs for news, we will continue to change.
Bates pointed out to NPR that circulation of Alabama titles had fallen from 260,000 to about 30,000. Meanwhile, roughly 1 million readers came to its website, Al.com, every day. Those trends extend into Michigan – we have almost as many followers to our year-old TikTok account as we have subscribers to our eight print newspapers across the state.
You may not follow us on social media, but 3 million people do. It may be hard to keep up with the river of news online, so you may be one of nearly a half million subscribers to our email newsletters. You may not want to pay for our news on the internet, but more than 12,000 have signed up for a digital subscription.
The point is, we’ve dedicated ourselves for 14 years to reinvention so we can continue to do what we love and what you depend on – getting the news to you in the manner you prefer it.
Back then, I told readers “It will be a great challenge, and every bit a historic opportunity.”
It still is, on both counts.
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John Hiner is the vice president of content for MLive Media Group. If you have questions you’d like him to answer, or topics to explore, share your thoughts at [email protected].
