This commentary is by native Vermonter Howard Fairman of Putney, who has loved newspapers and magazines ever since he learned to read them.
New England Newspapers Inc. is selling the daily Bennington Banner and Brattleboro Reformer and weekly Manchester Journal newsrooms and subscriber lists and bimonthly UpCountry Magazine to Guilford website entrepreneur Paul Belogour’s Vermont News and Media LLC.
Former stablemate Berkshire Eagle of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, will continue to provide their advertisements, pagination, printing, circulation, customer service, and accounts payable and receivable — the sine qua nons of staying in the print newspaper and magazine business.
Banner, Journal, Reformer and UpCountry must feed the Eagle or be devoured, retaining any profits, enduring any losses as long as they can.
The Eagle will survive, especially sans Banner, Journal and Reformer newsroom costs. Which puzzle do these pieces fit?
Belogour’s Boston Unisoft Technologies creates, maintains and enhances high-end websites and apps, and knows all about digital advertising. Lacking newsrooms and subscriber lists, he now has both. And the newsrooms are staffed by seasoned and maturing journalists excelling at both breaking and in-depth news, plus a magazine.
There will be one “Southern Vermont News” website replacing Banner, Journal and Reformer websites. RIP print, Banner, Journal and Reformer. UpCountry Magazine will be job-printed for visitors to pick up here and there.
Former Banner, Journal and Reformer will become a subsidiary of Boston Unisoft Technologies — any operating losses deductible from taxable corporate operating profits.
We have seen this before when the Graham family sold the declining Washington Post to ultra-rich Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for a $250 million incidental expense. Recently retiring Post Executive Editor Martin Baron said in the paper that new owner Bezos asked him and his staff why their business was suffering the impacts of the Internet while ignoring the benefits.
According to Columbia Journalism Review reporting on the Post’s renaissance: “When Amazon made the Kindle, they didn’t think, ‘Let’s get rid of the book and come up with a new way to read books.’ Their whole approach was, ‘How can we keep everything that’s fantastic about a book and also add in the gifts of digital?’”
The Post has become a national and international news medium attracting millions via written, photographic, graphic, audio and video stories, analyses and commentaries hyperlinked to previous Post and other coverage and background (“87.9 million total digital unique visitors in March 2021”).
The Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard notes “the difficulty inherent in trying to be someone’s second digital news subscription” — for example, national and your local daily. “In those cases, product differentiation is key.”
Substitute “statewide” for “local,” and we may be envisioning the future of print journalism in Vermont.
