Two Herald reporters in southern Vermont will be reassigned to cover Rutland County as the newspaper concentrates on its core readership, according to editor Steven Pappas. The Rutland newsroom will now have three full-time reporters instead of one.
“It’s a shame, but it’s not a wholesale abandonment. It’s a change in emphasis,” Pappas said Thursday of the reassignments of reporters Susan Smallheer, who worked out of Springfield, and Patrick McArdle, who focused on Bennington County.
The two papers have been losing readers in their hometown communities, Pappas said, so the emphasis will be on news from Rutland and Washington counties to build the readership base back up. The Times Argus has four full-time reporters, including one who covers the Statehouse for both papers. The sister papers often use the same stories in both publications, but Pappas said the two serve very different markets.
“Local content is king, and that’s what we’re going to put the focus on,” Pappas said. He added that the reporters who covered southern Vermont will write stories about big issues they covered, like Vermont Yankee and the PFOA contamination in the Bennington area, when major developments occur.
Pappas will be splitting his time between the newsrooms in Barre and Rutland and was officially named editor of both papers this week. The biggest change, he said, will be spending time in Rutland, where he said there has been no editor present. (Pappas served as managing editor at the Herald years ago.)
Pappas was upbeat and said he was excited about the future under new owners who purchased both papers in August. They had been owned by the Mitchell family, who held the Herald through three generations and seven decades.
The Mitchells sold the papers after financial difficulties, including a drop in readership and advertising revenue, particularly during the Great Recession, and a 2011 flood that destroyed the $7 million printing press at The Times Argus that was not fully insured.
According to a published report, the papers cut expenses by almost 40 percent between 2007 and 2013 and saw revenue drop by “roughly equal amounts.”
The financial situation at the Herald was so dire last year that some paychecks bounced, and employees placed liens against the company. Reade Brower, principal owner of Maine Today Media, and Chip Harris, of New Hampshire, purchased the two papers for an undisclosed sum.
A year ago, there were 13 full-time reporters, compared to seven today, according to Pappas. The Herald also lost several editors last year.
“I will not deny it’s been challenging, it’s been lean,” Pappas said.
But he said it made no business sense to keep covering news and delivering too few papers outside the core communities. The new owners, Pappas said, are committed to keeping a print edition alive five days a week for both papers and increasing the number of online readers.
Putting up a paywall and possibly losing readers, Pappas said, does not worry him. He said the move makes economic sense and that people say they want to financially support local news. The Mitchells had a paywall up, but it was taken down when the new owners took over.
“We can’t be giving away our content,” Pappas said. “It’s not a sustainable model.”
Pappas said the owners haven’t told him the papers are hemorrhaging money, which he said “probably means it’s flat.” Neither Brower nor Christopher Miles, the CEO of Vermont Community Media, who has overseen the transition, returned calls Thursday.
The newspaper, reporting the changes Thursday, said the new owners were pleased with the progress the papers are making. Pappas was praised for his leadership, particularly after the flood.
“I’m excited. I’m not nervous about it at all. I couldn’t ask for better people to move us into the next phase of building these papers to what they should be for these communities,” Pappas said.
The paper said Thursday that Pappas would be “working closely” with Herald General Manager Rob Mitchell in making the changes. Mitchell had been put in charge of overseeing both papers’ newsrooms when he was named general manager and editor-in-chief in March.
The Rutland Herald was founded in 1794 and The Times Argus in 1897. The Mitchells bought the Herald in 1947 and the TA in 1964.
In 2001, the Herald won the Pulitzer Prize for David Moats’ editorial series on civil unions. It was the first Pulitzer won by a Vermont newspaper.
According to a newspaper directory, the Herald has about 11,500 subscribers and The Times Argus has roughly 6,400.