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Articles
The economic pressures that led to the paper's fate, announced earlier this month, concern some weekly publications, which said ad revenues are more volatile and harder to collect. But most are weathering the economic downturn. "Our costs are up and advertising is down, and everybody is pinching costs from the little guy to the big guy," said Billy Delventhal, general manager at Anton Community Newspapers, with 18 weeklies covering much of Nassau. "But I think the weeklies are as strong as they've ever been editorial-wise...for the most part, we're pretty good." Some of Delventhal's colleagues agree. "Long Island is a hotbed of weekly newspapers," said Michelle Rea, executive director of the Albany-based New York Press Association, which represents the state's 812 weeklies, including the 77 in Nassau and 40 in Suffolk. "During the time that circulation has been falling for daily newspapers, weekly newspapers have grown tremendously." Local newspapers are "really the sweet spot of publishing at the moment," said Leah Dunaief, founder, editor in chief and publisher of the Setauket-based Times Beacon Record Newspapers. "We have something no one else has, the local news, the hometown paper that covers a village," she said, "almost block by block, student by student, civic association by civic association." Rick Edmonds, who analyzes media business for the nonprofit Poynter Institute in Florida, said weeklies overall have done well compared with larger daily newspapers, given their lower costs, and their reach into small, local retail advertisers. They're less likely to be affected by classified advertising migrating to the Internet, he said, and by an audience that increasingly claims it's too busy to read a daily paper. That said, Dunaief added that "it's definitely a more challenging environment to operate in without a doubt for every business except a bankruptcy attorney." Competing for advertising dollars becomes even more difficult in a weak economy. Newsday, Long Island's largest daily, also competes for the same revenue. Its Star Community Publishing Group is the largest publisher of local shoppers and niche products on Long Island and in the Northeast, including the Pennysaver, Yankee Trader and Newsday's Marketeer, reaching more than 2.6 million households and businesses weekly in Nassau, Suffolk, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Terry Tuthill is assistant publisher of the family-owned Long Island Advance in Patchogue and two other South Shore papers. Their history goes back 135 years. He said his papers were doing well, "considering." Michael Willmott, son of Suffolk Life's founder and longtime publisher David Willmott Sr., said the decision to close the paper was based on a combination of economic factors and the publisher's health. The recently hospitalized elder Willmott has asthma and a heart condition. "It was a personal decision and the economy was definitely a factor," Willmott said. The weak economy may not have hurt sales at a newspaper group, but it has made it tougher to collect the money, one publisher said. Jennifer Paley, publisher of a Suffolk newspaper group with six papers, including the Smithtown News and the Northport Observer, said its advertising sales and circulation rose this year compared with last "although collecting payments has become more difficult." Paley's husband, David Ambro, who is also an editor and writer for the papers, observed, "I'm not sure what the financial squeeze is on Suffolk Life, but I will say this is a pretty hard job. "There are small staff and a lot of work, a lot of things to keep up with and a lot of demand on your space from a lot of different organizations." But, he added, "I think the weekly newspapers are an extraordinary part of a community." Copyright 2008 Newsday, Inc.
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