Just five years ago, Burlington News Agency used to drop off 150 to 170 copies of the Sunday New York Times in the summertime at Willey’s Store in Greensboro.
That number always declined to about 75 when summer ended in the popular second-home community, said Glenn Murphy, who owns the Colchester-based distribution company. But as economic forces erode the publication of print media, the agency is down to just 22 Sunday papers in Greensboro.
Burlington News Agency stopped delivering papers the rest of the week — in Greensboro and several other northern Vermont towns — altogether just before summer. And in September, it stopped delivering all magazines to Greensboro and all of its other stores, saying that it just wasn’t worth the cost.
“Everything is going online,” said Murphy.
The conditions behind the distribution of newspapers and magazines are complex and for Burlington News Agency, they are different. The decision to stop Monday-through-Saturday newspaper deliveries in Greensboro, Cabot, Hardwick and other nearby towns was based on things like labor (the company can’t find enough drivers, and Murphy often spends his day on the road as a result) and the increasingly high marginal costs of the newspaper delivery as stores order fewer and fewer copies. Many stores in Chittenden County, including downtown Burlington, only sell one copy of the Boston Globe each day, Murphy said.
The magazine distribution, like the newspaper distribution, also didn’t make the company enough money. Murphy’s brother, who had been operating that side of the business, recently chose to leave the company, Murphy said. He decided that was a good time to end magazine deliveries.
“I don’t have the time to manage the magazine system and deal with all the publishers when we see sales declining year over year over year,” he said. “I can’t even find someone to hire to come in and do it.”
Murphy has known for some time that his own days are numbered at the family business unless he can diversify into an area that makes money. Accordingly, the newspaper vans now also deliver kiln-dried firewood – processed by Murphy’s company — to stores. Murphy also made a foray several years ago into an all-natural insect lotion that he sold on Amazon and in stores, but he said his efforts to keep the news agency going have prevented him from investing the time he needs in that business.
“Our grandfather started it in 1939 and there’s a sense of loyalty to that,” said Murphy. “I know some people in certain areas get upset that we cut territories off; people feel like they have a right to a publication, we get that often. I understand that feeling. But it comes down to economies.”
Rob Hurst, whose family owns Willey’s Store, said doing without the daily New York Times has been difficult for some of the people in town.
“It’s an aging population, so a lot of them don’t necessarily like to read the papers online or use their phones,” said Hurst. “It’s almost a ritual in some cases. They were devastated that we had to tell them they couldn’t get their daily paper.”
Burlington News Agency’s other large Sunday New York Times customer, Paradise Deli near the Sugarbush Resort, used to get 100 copies of the paper on Sundays, and now it would be down to 15, Murphy said, if the store’s new owner hadn’t decided just to skip the New York Times altogether.
Murphy said that winding up the magazine operation now will save the company the trouble later as printed materials cease to be distributed altogether.
“It will be one less step that will happen down the road when we can’t do this anymore,” he said. “There isn’t enough revenue.”
Burlington News Agency is just one of many print distributors in Vermont, and the others belong to larger companies.
After 80 years of delivery, Murphy feels a sense of responsibility for customers.
“But we have to go the same miles for less sales, and the same wear and tear,” he said. “So what we have done reluctantly is we look at the revenue analysis on each route. What is it costing us to go there? Can we continue to go there, or are we putting ourselves out of business?”
When Hurst, at Willey’s, learned that the daily New York Times delivery was ending, he called several other stores in northern Vermont to see if there was another distributor who might pick up the Greensboro drop-off. He couldn’t find one.
“Newspapers are kind of a tough thing because newspapers don’t really make the store money,” he said. “It’s more of a convenience to the customers.”
