State’s newspapers tackle industry’s problem No. 1

DURHAM – There were as many opinions as panelists Thursday when executives from nine daily New Hampshire newspapers gathered to discuss what the future of newspapers will be, if one exists at all.

The diverse opinions are a mirror of the disharmony among print journalism experts everywhere in the face of declining advertising revenue, free-falling profits and drastically changing reading habits as customers flock to free, Web-based news sources. There was hardly agreement on even whether such problems are caused by a lousy economy or whether they are challenges that are more fundamental, that the industry must overcome.

The public forum, held at the University of New Hampshire’s Memorial Union Building, brought together editors and publishers to talk about the challenges newspapers are facing as well as what changes must be made to surmount those challenges.

The executives came from The Telegraph, The New Hampshire Union Leader, the Portsmouth Herald, the Concord Monitor, The Keene Sentinel, Foster’s Daily Democrat, The Citizen of Laconia, The Conway Daily Sun and the Valley News of Lebanon.

Opinions varied on a number of topics brought up by moderator Lewis Feldstein, president of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, including to what extent the problems are affecting community newspapers, whether those issues stem from the struggling economy or are more fundamental to whether newspapers should charge for content available on their Web sites.

“It was so indicative of the turmoil facing the industry,” said Geordie Wilson, publisher of the Concord Monitor.

Telegraph publisher Terry Williams organized the forum, which was sponsored by the UNH journalism program, to give readers across the state a sense of the struggle local papers are faced with. Too often, he said, headlines about struggling papers are about major metro papers saddled with massive debt and often facing very different challenges.

The Boston Globe and The New York Times are hardly the only papers cutting staffs and searching for budget cuts. In July, the Eagle Times of Claremont shut its doors thanks, according to its publisher and owner, to the general economy and the state of the newspaper industry.

The paper has since reopened under new ownership, but for a period, Claremont was without a common forum for residents to learn about everything from local politics and crime to the school bus schedule and school lunch menus.

“It belonged to the communities it served and then it was gone,” Williams said.

What agreement there was among the panelists was in regards to a community paper’s value, specifically its role as a unifying forum for matters of intensely local interest.

“I think it is important to cast a light on that and to talk about that,” Wilson said.

John Tabor, publisher of the Portsmouth Herald, said wedding announcements, obituaries and stories about local zoning proposals are what make community newspapers vital because the information they provide is “so connected to our lives.”

“Those are fundamental strengths that we have going forward,” Tabor said. “We should stop weeping in front of our open graves.”

There was also general agreement that citizen journalists and bloggers would have a hard time supplanting newspapers since they are often targeted at a focused audience.

In addition, as Howard Altschiller, executive editor of the Portsmouth Herald pointed out, a newspaper often has more resources to defend journalists when they expose corruption or scandal; one of newspapers’ chief responsibilities as government watchdogs.

Joseph G. Cote can be reached at 594-6415 or jcote@nashuatelegraph.com.