Newspapers will continue to lose circulation and advertising, but companies that embrace technological change will thrive, Denver Post publisher William Dean Singleton told a group of newspaper executives Wednesday.
Readers are flocking to Internet offerings such as the Denver Newspaper Agency’s YourHub.com, which is a marriage of Internet and print products filled primarily with reader-submitted content, Singleton said at a Suburban Newspapers of America conference at the Brown Palace Hotel.
“The sooner we start acting like a technology industry, the sooner we are not a has-been. We are a will-be,” he said.
The DNA, which was formed through a joint operating agreement between The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, designed YourHub.com to compete with suburban newspapers. Metro Denver is broken into 40 local websites at YourHub.com so readers can access content provided by their neighbors.
Suburban weeklies are in smaller communities and have a close relationship with readers and advertisers, so they are better positioned than large newspapers to take advantage of changes in the way people get information, Singleton said.
YourHub.com was launched in May and targets smaller businesses with advertising rates that are lower than in The Post and the News and on their websites.
The young people who are most attracted to newer technological information sources don’t see themselves represented in newspapers, Singleton said. The Internet gives newspapers an opportunity to reach them.
Singleton’s speech came on the heels of announcements that The New York Times and two Philadelphia papers – the Inquirer and the Daily News – are eliminating jobs.
The Times will cut about 500 jobs, while Knight Ridder’s Philadelphia papers will eliminate a total of 100 jobs.
Singleton’s privately held Media News Group, based in Denver, owns all or part of 51 daily newspapers in 12 states, including The Post. It also owns a CBS TV affiliate in Anchorage, Alaska, and radio stations in Texas.
“There is no question that print is mature and print is declining … When you put print and online together, most companies are doing pretty well,” Singleton said after his speech.
“The challenge we have always had is, will our new-media revenue grow fast enough to offset our old-media declines? For us, so far they have.”
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-820-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
